Principal component analysis in wild Apismellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) wingsfrom Trujillo, Laredo, Casa Grande andViru. La Libertad, Peru

Abstract

Geometric morphometry abstracts the shape of organisms by using reference points, quantifies
and analyzes the morphological variation of different species. The objective of this work was to
determine the population structure of wild bees Apis mellifera L. from Trujillo, Laredo, Casa Grande
and Viru, by means of principal component analysis; samples of nurse worker bees were collected
from November 2019 to March 2020 and preserved in 70% alcohol, then they were transferred
to the Entomology laboratory of the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the National University of
Trujillo, the right mesothoracic wings were mounted and images of these were taken in JPG format,
with the Samsung J6PLUS cell phone camera calibrated with the Euromex stereoscope. An HP
Intel Core i5 laptop was used and a tps file of the images was created using tpsUtil64 version 1.81
software; then with tpsDig2 version 2.32, 19 anatomical reference points were placed, converted
into coordinates in a two-dimensional plane and saved in the same file; then, MorphoJ software was
used and procrustes and principal component analyses were performed. The first two components
were found to explain 30.85% of the cumulative variance, the first with 17.34% and the second with
13.51%, with a significant overlap between the bees of the four locations, there is no significant
difference between the negative end of PC1 and the positive end of PC1 according to the deformed
wing contour diagrams. Principal component analysis shows that the investigated wild A. mellifera
colonies are genetically very homogeneous.