Population Genetic Structure of the Introduced North American Population of the Hornet, Vespa Crabro Germana Christ

168 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.Mitochondrial sequence data revealed that the probable source for the North American population was Germany. The data also suggested that the founding group was small; there was but a single mitochondrial haplotype represented for North America at the three loci investigated (COI, COII and Cytochrome-B). Microsatellite data indicated that North American V. crabro have an exceedingly low level of genetic variation, both overall and when compared with levels of variation found in Europe. Wright's FST values significantly differed between North American and European populations as did numbers of alleles per locus and allele frequencies. Perhaps the most compelling data from this investigation was that, for one locus, there was but a single allele found for all of North America. This confirmed the earlier conclusion from the mitochondrial dataset, that the founding population for North America was small. Finally, my investigation of the spatial distribution of alleles indicated that variation decreases as the population has spread. At each locus, there were fewer alleles detected for each of the subpopulations (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest) moving away from the introduction site. There was also a significant shift in the relative allele frequencies between the Northeast and Midwest subpopulations, indicating a loss of variation. These data represent the first molecular genetic investigation of North American V. crabro. I anticipate that these data will establish a baseline for future studies of this and other introduced social hymenopterans.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD