STUDIES ON MORPHOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF STINGLESS BEE TETRAGONULA IRIDIPENNIS IN DIFFERENT TOPOGRAPHIC REGIONS OF SOUTHERN, TAMIL NADU, INDIA

Abstract

Stingless bees also referred to as meliponine bees. The morphological and morphometric characteristics of these bees differ depending on the species and environmental kinds. The current study sought to discover the morphology and morphometric characteristics of Tetragonula iridipennis in Tamil Nadu, India. The morphometric values of collected worker bees were compared with locations. The bees captured in the Kolli hills were significantly larger than those collected elsewhere. The mean value of   HL (1.43 mm), HW (1.68 mm), AL (1.98mm), HLL (3.54 mm) and FL (3.84 mm) were recorded.  The bees collected from Natham had a short HL of 1.20 mm. The results revealed that the variance of four principal components reached 82.4 percent, as (PC1) 38.58 %, (PC2) 20.95 %, (PC 3) 19.75 % and (PC4) 8.10 %. The characters of FL, HW, FW, HLL, Al, OOD, HTW and HL are the most discriminative in the principal component analysis.