Figure 3: Phylogeny of mitochondrial genomes, and changes in effective population size.
From: Museum samples reveal rapid evolution by wild honey bees exposed to a novel parasite
The vast majority of mitochondrial genetic diversity in the old population (blue) has been lost in the modern population (red). Coalescent analysis estimated the 95% highest posterior density of the mitochondrial Ne between 2 × 105 and 2 × 106 fifty years ago versus between ∼300 and 1,800 today. These data suggest that the arrival of V. destructor was associated with massive colony mortality and intense selection acting on the bees. A major mitochondrial clade appears to have completely disappeared. The most common haplotype present in many of the modern bees and one of the old bees, is identical to the A. mellifera ligustica (Italian) mitochondrial haplotype53. The modern population appears to have descended from a relatively small number of queens. Nodes with solid circles correspond to 1.0 posterior probability, while those with open circles represents probabilities >0.95.
