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. 2016 May;107(3):220-7.
doi: 10.1093/jhered/esw005. Epub 2016 Jan 16.

Genome-Wide Association Study of a Varroa-Specific Defense Behavior in Honeybees (Apis mellifera)

Andreas Spötter  1 , Pooja Gupta  1 , Manfred Mayer  1 , Norbert Reinsch  1 , Kaspar Bienefeld  2
Affiliations

Genome-Wide Association Study of a Varroa-Specific Defense Behavior in Honeybees (Apis mellifera)

Andreas Spötter et al. J Hered. 2016 May.

Abstract

Honey bees are exposed to many damaging pathogens and parasites. The most devastating is Varroa destructor, which mainly affects the brood. A promising approach for preventing its spread is to breed Varroa-resistant honey bees. One trait that has been shown to provide significant resistance against the Varroa mite is hygienic behavior, which is a behavioral response of honeybee workers to brood diseases in general. Here, we report the use of an Affymetrix 44K SNP array to analyze SNPs associated with detection and uncapping of Varroa-parasitized brood by individual worker bees (Apis mellifera). For this study, 22 000 individually labeled bees were video-monitored and a sample of 122 cases and 122 controls was collected and analyzed to determine the dependence/independence of SNP genotypes from hygienic and nonhygienic behavior on a genome-wide scale. After false-discovery rate correction of the P values, 6 SNP markers had highly significant associations with the trait investigated (α < 0.01). Inspection of the genomic regions around these SNPs led to the discovery of putative candidate genes.

Keywords: Candidate genes; SNP array; Varroa destructor; Varroa resistance.; hygienic behavior.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Photo from the video of hygienic behavior towards Varroa-infested brood cells. Software-assisted each cell was marked differently according to its infestation status (Varroa infested, non-Varroa infested). Cell 31, pictured here, has already been completely uncapped so that the pupa is visible. The bee to the right of the cell, marked number 68, has opened this Varroa-parasitized cell.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Manhattan plot using the minus_log_P values of the 26 007 nonmonomorphic SNPs that satisfied all of the filters. The dotted line shows the significance threshold. The 6 SNPs which show significant genome-wide associations with DUVB at the genotype level can be seen above the threshold, at chromosomes 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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