Phylogenetic relationship between the gut bacterial flora of honeybee (<i>Apis mellifera</i>) from Apiary in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The present study is aimed to determine the phylogenetic relationship between honeybee (Apis mellifera) gut microbiome from Apiary in Olabisi Onabanjo University and Osoba Avenue Odo-Epo, Odogbolu Local  Government. Honeybees workers (A. mellifera) totaling twenty (20) were collected into a vile having a powdery sugar from the apiary located in OOU and Osoba Avenue at Odo-Epo during rainy season in July and transported to Zoology and Environmental Biology laboratory in OOU and kept in ice-cubes (-50oC) till  daybreak. Before the dissection process, the bees were washed in 95% ethanol and complete alimentary canals of the bees were aseptically dissected by clipping the stinger with sterile forceps. The phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rDNA gene were further used to characterize the organism in order to establish relationships among them. The partial 16S rDNA sequences obtained were utilized in search of reference nucleotide sequence available in NCBI GenBank database using BlastN algorithm. Maft version 7.0 was employed in the multiple  alignments of nucleotide sequences while trees were drawn based on character method (Maximum Likelihood) for comparing set of data against set of models of evolution using MEGA 7.