Short Communication |
Corresponding author: Martin Husemann ( martin.husemann@uni-hamburg.de ) Academic editor: Michael Ohl
© 2020 Martin Husemann, Lara-Sophie Dey, Oliver Hawlitschek.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Husemann M, Dey L-S, Hawlitschek O (2020) Vespa velutina nigrithorax Lepeltier, 1836 from Hamburg (Northern Germany) shares the same COI haplotype with other European populations. Journal of Hymenoptera Research 79: 111-115. https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.79.57048
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The yellow-legged, or Asian hornet, Vespa velutina, has invaded large parts of South-Western Europe and now starts spreading further north. Recently, it has been reported from Hamburg, Northern Germany. Yet, the origin of this new invasion is not clear as the founders may have come either from Southern Europe or from Asia. We here use COI sequences to test these alternatives and find that the specimens from Hamburg share the same haplotype with all Southern European samples. This suggests that the species has been transported long distance from other Europe to Northern Germany and shows further its high invasion potential.
Asian hornet, France, honey bees, Italy, yellow legged hornet
The Asian yellow legged hornet (Vespa velutina Lepeltier, 1836) was introduced to Southern Europe via pottery from China before 2004 (
We sequenced the COI gene for nine specimens from Hamburg from five locations and two specimens from Paris in our analyses: two specimens from 53.543056°N, 10.073639°E, collected in fall 2019 in a wasp trap; two specimens from 53.570915°N, 9.850126°E (17.08.2020); three specimens from 53.569317°N, 9.850461°E (18.08.2020); one specimen from 53.575623°N, 9.856934°E (14.08.2020); one specimen from 53.539700°N, 10.058650°E (27.07.2020); and two specimens from Paris, Jardin des Plantes (48.844708°N, 2.362767°E; 23.07.2020, leg. Q. Rome). We extracted DNA from one leg of each specimen using a Chelex protocol (
We further downloaded all available sequences for Vespa velutina from BOLD systems (90 sequences, plus 11 newly generated sequences) with sequences of Vespa crabro from Canada and of Vespa mandarinia from Nepal as outgroups. All sequences were aligned using MUSCLE (
We estimated the most suitable substitution model using MrModeltest v.2.3 (
Nine specimens from Hamburg and two from Paris were successfully sequenced (NBCI Accession numbers MT941771–MT941781), and we confirmed the species identity as Vespa velutina (in line with the morphological identification) using the BLAST algorithms of the NCBI and BOLD databases. All 11 new sequences were identical. The best hits were for V. velutina without subspecies designation in both databases. The best hits with subspecies designation were for V. v. nigrithorax. The Bayesian phylogenetic tree was poorly resolved due to the low divergence of sequences (data not shown). The haplotype network clearly separates haplotypes from Indonesia and Malaysia (Fig.
The presence of V. v. nigrithorax in Hamburg remains surprising given the large distance to any other European populations. Considering the interest in the species and the reporting duties by the EU, it remains unlikely that the species has reached Northern Germany on natural routes without being seen. The large gap in occurrence in central Germany hence suggests that the species likely was anthropogenically transported over a long distance from Southern Europe to Northern Germany. This once more demonstrates the high invasion potential of the species.
We thank Dr. Willi Müller, Oliver Wieckhorst and several anonymous citizen scientists for reporting and recovering the additional specimens. Thank goes to Quentin Rome for specimens from France. We also thank Melanie Larisch and Sajad Noori for support in the molecular lab. Finally, we want to thank Quentin Rome and Christian Hach for critical comments on a previous version of the manuscript.