Preliminary report on cross-species microsatellite amplification for bumblebee biodiversity and conservation studies

The Iberian Peninsula holds a high diversity of bumblebees but there is a general lack of information about their biodiversity in this area. To overcome this and facilitate conservation studies, we present two novel multiplex assays for the amplification of six and five microsatellite loci respectively. Both assays successfully amplified for most of the studied species in the Iberian populations. Sibling workers and population genetic parameters were analysed in the managed species B. terrestris and in the wild species B. monticola and B. mesomelas, demonstrating the capability of these multiplex assays for biodiversity studies of both managed and wild bumblebee species