Morphometric and landmark based variations of Apis mellifera L. wings in the forest vegetation zone of Nigeria

There are several different methods of classifying insect. The technique of using wing landmarks and morphometric features to discriminate insect population into species and specify the variations in the varieties within the intra specific group was used to classify Apis mellifera kept in beekeeping practice in the forest vegetation zone of Nigeria into morphoclusters. The multivariate morphometric data obtained was analysed with parametric statistic tools of mean, standard deviation and standard error. The distribution and relation between them were subjected to two step cluster analysis. Morphoclusters means were presented in centroids and also the simultaneous confidence intervals (95%) of means values of wing morphometric and landmarks were expressed. Varieties of Apis mellifera found in this study formed four distinct morphoclusters based on wing landmarks and morphometric. Osun State recorded morphoclusters 1 and 2 while Ebonyi and Oyo States had morphoclusters 3 and 4 respectively. 20 landmarks that occurred on the forewing of morphoclusters 1, 3 and 4 were the same while the record of 19 landmarks observed in honeybees of morphoclusters 2 was different from the existing records. Based on our findings in this study it is reliable to use the variations on the wing landmarks and morphometric of honeybee workers to group Apis mellifera in Nigeria into varieties of existing species.