Discrimination of Two Tetragonula (Apidae: Meliponini) Species in Thailand using Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Wing Venation

Authors

  • Atsalek Rattanawannee Department of Entomology, Faculty of Agriculture, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand.
  • Orawan Duangpakdee King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (Ratchaburi Campus), Ratchaburi 70150, Thailand.
  • Preecha Rod-im Division of Natural Resource Management, School of Bioresources and Technology, University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok 10140, Thailand.
  • Randall Hepburn Department of Zoology and Entomology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa.

Keywords:

stingless bees, geometric morphometrics, wing venation pattern, Tetragonula pagdeni, Tetragonula fuscobalteata

Abstract

Geometric morphometrics is a novel powerful tool for the identification of bee species and subspecies. An application of this method is presented to discriminate two stingless bee species, Tetragonula pagdeni Schwarz, 1939 and Tetragonula fuscobalteata Cameron, 1908, in Thailand based on forewing venation. Nine landmarks were measured from the digitized right forewing of 200 workers (10 bees per colony). Eleven colonies of T. pagdeni and nine colonies of T. fuscobalteata collected from several locations in Thailand were determined. The positions of the groups in the principal component analysis plots revealed that the species are clearly distinct. Multivariate analysis of variance (α = 0.01) showed a significant difference between the bees of the sibling species, producing a high degree of accuracy (96.50%) in the identification of any individual bee of either species. Therefore, it is proposed that geometric morphometric analysis of single wings might be an appropriate first step in the analysis and identification of stingless bees and other insects.

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Published

2015-10-31

How to Cite

Rattanawannee, Atsalek, Orawan Duangpakdee, Preecha Rod-im, and Randall Hepburn. 2015. “Discrimination of Two Tetragonula (Apidae: Meliponini) Species in Thailand Using Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Wing Venation”. Agriculture and Natural Resources 49 (5). Bangkok, Thailand:700-710. https://li01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/anres/article/view/243730.

Issue

Vol. 49 No. 5 (2015): September-October

Section

Research Article

License

online 2452-316X print 2468-1458/Copyright © 2022. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),
production and hosting by Kasetsart University of Research and Development Institute on behalf of Kasetsart University.