Genetic diversity among queen bee, worker bees and larvae in terms of retrotransposon movements

Honey bee ( Apis mellifera L.) is a model organism, contributing significant effect on global ecology by pollination and examining due to its social behaviour. In this study, barley-specific Sukkula and Nikita retrotransposons were analysed using IRAP (Inter-Retrotransposon Amplification Polymorphism) marker technique, and the relationships between retrotransposon movements and development were also investigated in three different colonies of the Caucasian honey bee ( A. mellifera caucasica ). Furthermore, transposon sequences belonging to A. mellifera , Bombus terrestris , Triticum turgidum L. and Hordeum vulgare L. were also examined to figure out evolutionary relationships. For this purpose, a queen bee, five worker bees, and five larvae from each colony were studied. Both retrotransposons were found in all samples in three colonies with different polymorphism ratios (0–100% for Nikita and 0–67% for Sukkula ). We also determined polymorphisms in queen–worker (0–83% for Nikita , 0–63% for Sukkula ), queen–larvae (0–83% for Nikita , 0–43% for Sukkula ) and worker–larvae comparisons (0–100% for Nikita , 0–63% for Sukkula ) in colonies. Moreover, close relationships among transposons found in plant and insect genomes as a result of in silico evaluations to verify experimental results. This work could be one of the first studies to analyse plant-specific retrotransposons’ movements in honey bee genome. Results are expected to understand evolutionary relationships in terms of horizontal transfer of transposons among kingdoms.