Nature Communications (Nov 2017)

A soft selective sweep during rapid evolution of gentle behaviour in an Africanized honeybee

  • Arian Avalos,
  • Hailin Pan,
  • Cai Li,
  • Jenny P. Acevedo-Gonzalez,
  • Gloria Rendon,
  • Christopher J. Fields,
  • Patrick J. Brown,
  • Tugrul Giray,
  • Gene E. Robinson,
  • Matthew E. Hudson,
  • Guojie Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01800-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Africanized honey bees (AHB) are notoriously aggressive, but in Puerto Rico they have a ‘gentle’ phenotype. Here, Avalos et al. show that there has been a soft selective sweep at several loci in the Puerto Rican AHB population and suggest a role in the rapid evolution of gentle behaviour.