INDIAN BLACK HONEYBEE

ChinmayaIAS Academy - Current Affairs November 7, 2022 GS3 Leave a comment 265 Views

A new species of endemic honeybee has been discovered in the Western Ghats. The new species has been named Apiskarinjodian and given the common name Indian black honeybee.
The finding has been published in the September issue of Entomon, a peer-reviewed journal brought out by the Association for Advancement of Entomology.
The research team behind the discovery comprised Shanas S. from Kerala Agricultural University’s Integrated Farming Systems Research Station, Karamana, here;
Anju Krishnan G., a Ph.D. research scholar from the Zoology Department of S.N. College, Cherthala (affiliated to the University of Kerala);
and Mashhoor K. from the EMEA College of Arts and Science, Malappuram. It is after a gap of more than 200 years that a new species of honeybee has been spotted in the Western Ghats.
The last honeybee described from India was Apisindica in 1798 by Fabricius. Although Fabricius named the Indian bee Apisindica, it was not considered a valid species till now.
The research team restored the status of Apisindica based on a new measure for species discrimination in honeybees termed ‘Radio-Medial Index (RMI).’
They obtained high-resolution photographs of the type specimen from the Natural History Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, to prove the distinct identity of Apisindica, which led to the discovery of Apiskarinjodian.
Apiskarinjodian has evolved from Apiscerana morphotypes that got acclimatised to the hot and humid environment of the Western Ghats.
Molecular analysis of mitochondrial DNA was also carried out and molecular sequence data available in the public open database NCBI-GenBank also helped confirm the species status of the new honeybee.
The research work took more than three years.
The distribution of Apiskarinjodian ranges from the central Western Ghats and Nilgiris to the southern Western Ghats, covering the States of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.