Determination of the phoretic nematodes associated with the bees in family Halictidae and Andrenidae in Aegean and Mediterranean regions

This study was conducted to determine the phoretic nematodes associated with soil-dwelling bees in Aegean and Mediterranean regions of Turkey. During the field study 601 bees were collected from flowers with a sweep net or mouth aspirator. GPS coordinates, date and the name of the places where the bees were collected were recorded. Adult bees were transported back to the laboratory alive in a cool box. After identification procedures, the bees were dissected under the microscope to determine nematode presence. Three hundered eleven bees from Mediterranean and 290 bee samples from Aegean regions were dissected. Fourty four bees were positive for nematode existence. One of them was isolated from Halictidae whereas the other 43 nematode isolates were recovered from Andrenidae bees. The nematode presence was determined as 7.49% at collected bees from Aegean and Mediterranean regions. Ege ve Akdeniz bölgelerinden toplanan arılardaki nematod açısından pozitiflik oranı %7.49 olarak belirlenmiştir. Phoretic nematodes were isolated from abdominal glands of Andrena and Dufour gland of Halictidae female bees. It was determined that all isolated nematodes were in dauer stages. Only one nematode isolate out of 44 could be successfully growth at in vitro condition. After molecular and morphometric analyses, this nematode was identified as Pristionchus maupasi.