A. Murat Aytekin

This study makes contributions to the biology of Bombus (Megabombus) argillaceus (Hymenoptera: Apidae) (Scopoli, 1805). A new nest belonging to this species was discovered on the slope of a small spring located on the highlands of Kahramanmaraş Province (southern Turkey). The architecture, material and the contents of the nest were determined. Coco...

Bumble bees ( Bombus spp.) are a widespread corbiculate lineage (Apinae: Corbiculata: Bombini), mostly found among temperate and alpine ecosystems. Approximately 260 species have been recognized and grouped recently into a simplified system of 15 subgenera. Most of the species are nest-building and primitively eusocial. Species of Bombus have been...

Report of the catches made by the European bee determination training (COST Super-B Project) in the Calanques National Park.

The diversity of life is the basis of all biological studies and species diagnosis is the first step in determining questions such as detection of biological diversity, ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary problems. Due to the restrictions on the morphology-based identification of species, more effective methods for species identification h...

The aim of the study is to assess the influence of two different venom extraction methods, disruption of venom reservoir and manual milking, on the protein composition of Bombus (Bombus) terrestris venom. Through proteomic analyses, including determination of protein concentrations, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and peptide mass fingerprinti...

The aim of the study is to assess the influence of two different venom extraction methods, disruption of venom reservoir and manual milking, on the protein composition of Bombus (Bombus) terrestris venom. Through proteomic analyses, including determination of protein concentrations, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and peptide mass fingerprinti...

There are several unaddressed problems in the taxonomy of bumblebees which motivate researchers to look for alternative methods. The morphological characters of the male genitalia are reliable and also distinctive for bumblebee taxonomy as in most of the other insect groups. However, it is always used to identify species of bumblebees but not used...

The faunal composition and the floral visitation patterns of Megachilidae (Apoidea: Hymenoptera) species in the Mediterranean region of southern Turkey were investigated. Field studies were performed at spring and summer seasons of 2008 and 2009. The study was conducted in fourteen provinces. Four hundred-nine bee specimens were captured from 17 ge...

Data on variation in the chloroplast genome can be used to estimate the phylogeny of wheat. A specific region of cpDNA (∼1600 base pairs) of wheat was amplified by PCR technique and this region was digested by several restriction enzymes such as EcoR I, Bcl I, Hsp92 I, Taq I, Hinf I and EcoR V. The banding patterns were compared by using agarose ge...

The aim of this study was to analyze the 12 species which belong to the subgenus Bombus (Thoracobombus) by identifying, collating and testing the applicability of geometrics morphometrics for distinguishing the species. This was carried out on 133 females and 42 males which were collected from various localities in Turkey. After digitizing landmark...

Taxonomic assignment of fossils can be difficult because descriptions and phylogenetic analyses are often based on a limited number of discrete visible morphological characters. Quantitative, morphometric analyses can help to assign fossil specimens to modern groups, especially when two-dimensional features, such as insect wings, provide easily ide...

The first fossil bumble bee (Apinae: Bombini) from the Miocene Randeck Maar of southwestern Germany is described and illustrated. The specimen is subjected to a geometric morphometric analysis along with a diversity of other bumble bee species representing most major extant lineages, and particularly the subgenus Bombus s.s. The morphometric analys...

B. cullumanus is known as a strongly regressing species in West-Europe. While the species once had a large distribution from S-Sweden to N-Spain, it now seems to be extinct. The last specimen was collected in 2004 in the Massif Central (France). There are two other taxa from disjunct areas that are very close relatives: B. serrisquama , from Spanis...

Bumblebees of the subgenus Bombus s. str. dominate (or used to dominate) many north temperate pollinator assemblages and include most of the commercial bumblebee pollinator species. Several species are now in serious decline, so conservationists need to know precisely which ones are involved. The problem is that many Bombus s. str. species are cryp...

The nesting behaviour of the subgenus Mendacibombus is known only from Bombus mendax. Here, we describe the nest of a second species of Mendacibombus, that of Bombus shaposhnikovi. The nest was discovered in an abandoned rodent nest at 2,295m near Artvin (Turkey) on August 12, 2007. Except for the absence of a canopy and the non-hexagonal shape of...

An intraspecific study of Phlebotomus sergenti was performed on populations from Turkey, Syria, Israel, and Uzbekistan by four different approaches: geometric morphometrics, RAPD analysis, internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) sequencing (nuclear marker), and cytochrome B sequencing (mitochondrial marker). In RAPD analysis, distinct clades were form...

The faunistic study was conducted in 17 boroughs belonging to Afyonkarahisar province between 2006 and 2009. A total number of 809 bee specimens were examined. 80 species belonging to the Bombini (11) and Halictidae (69) were identified. 49 of the determined species are reported for the first time for the Aegean Region and 67 species of which are a...

The Halictidae collections of the Natural History Museum of Vienna (Austria), the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum of Linz (Austria), and the Université de Mons-Hainaut (Belgium) were inspected in order to review the Halictus Latreille (Halictidae: Hymenoptera) fauna of Turkey. Added to this were data from the literature as well as data collected...

Short descriptions of the females and males of all the species of the bee genus Halictus Latreille, 1804 (Halictidae) known from Turkey are given. Dorsal and lateral views of the male genitalia of 18 species were photographed by scanning electron microscope and 12 species by digital camera systems. The morphological differences in the male genitali...

By their pollinating characteristics, bumblebees are of great importance both in wild ecosystems (mainly in cold and temperate biomes) and in agricultural crops. The main common bumblebee's species of Palaearctic and Nearctic regions belong to the subgenus Bombus s. str. Despite their relative high abundance, their systematics could be considered a...

Temperature affects both the biology and morphology of mosquito vectors. Geometric morphometrics is a useful new tool for capturing and analyzing differences in shape and size in many morphological parameters, including wings. We have used this technique for capturing the differences in the wings of the malaria vector Anopheles superpictus, using c...

Bombus shaposhnikovi Skorikov is a member of the subgenus Mendacibombus Skorikov and is known from mountain meadows of east Anatolia, Caucasus and North Iran. The subgenus Mendacibombus shows many plesiomorphic characters and is considered as the sister-group of all other bumblebee subgenera. The nesting behaviour of this subgenus is highly charact...

During a study of bird nesting in SW. Anatolia, 125 man-made nest boxes have been installed, 3 m high, in the trees. These nest boxes have been occupied by several bird species (Phoenicurus phoenicurus, Parus major, Parus ater, Sitta krueperi, Certhia brachydactyla). Of the 48 Redstart nests, 19 (40 %) had been successfully invaded by the bumblebee...

The wing-shape morphology of local populations of the medically important phlebotomine sand flies, Phlebotomus sergenti, P. papatasi, P. tobbi, and P. similis, were examined in both sexes by using geometric morphometrics. There are three major mountain ranges that may serve as geographical barriers for species distribution in the study area and fou...

The two Old World genera, Phlebotomus and Sergentomyia, were both recorded in southern Anatolia in Turkey. Phlebotomus species predominated and comprised about 93% of the entire collection (3,172 specimens). Out of the sixteen species identified, two belonged to the genus Sergentomyia: S. dentata and S. theodori. The remaining fourteen species in t...

Thewing-shapemorphologyoflocalpopulationsofthemedicallyimportantphlebotominesandflies,Phlebotomussergenti,P.papatasi,P.tobbi,and.similis,were.Therefour.�efoundnostatisticallyimportantdi��erencesinwingmorphology�einallexaminedspeciesinbothsexesforalllocalpopulations.Theseresultsshowthatthebarriersarenotsufficienttostopgeneflowamonglocalpopulationsof...

B. (Sibiricobombus) niveatus and B. (Sibiricobombus) vorticosus are analyzed and compared with selected species of the subgenera Melanobombus and Mendacibombus. Different geometric morphometric methods based on wings landmark data show that there are no morphological differences between B. niveatus and B. vorticosus. These results support the hypot...

Phlebotomus sergenti populations from different areas of the Mediterranean basin are known to exhibit high intraspecific variability. Previous studies of ITS2 revealed the presence of two branches that may represent sibling species. To corroborate this finding by other tools, two colonies of P. sergenti originating from Turkey and Israel, each belo...

The southern populations of arcto-alpine species of bumblebees, isolated at the tops of mountains, suffer from a very weak connectivity. It is likely a major constraint in spite of a high floral diversity. It could result in the very intense phenomena of phylogenetic differenciation (speciation and subspeciation). On the contrary, these phenomena o...

Four populations of Anopheles sacharovi Favre occurring in different ecological subregions at altitudes between 353-1,126 m in the Sanliurfa Province of southeast Turkey were compared using morphometric and allozyme analyses. Four allozyme loci were assessed for genetic differentiation among samples from four localities. The similarity phenogram ob...

Three taxa of the subgenus Sibiricobombus live in the Near-East mountain steppes: Bombus niveatus, B. sulfureus and B. vorticosus. The latter is also present in the Balkan. B. niveatus and B. vorticosus can only be distinguished based on color pattern. B. sulfureus differs in coat color and in genitalia. We identified 40 compounds in the secretions...

Four populations of the phlebotomine sandfly Phlebotomus (Phlebotomus) papatasi (Scopoli) (Diptera: Psychodidae), in different ecoregions at altitudes between 368 and 1117 m in the Sanliurfa Province of Turkey, were compared using morphometric and isoenzyme analyses. A similarity phenogram obtained from allozyme data showed that heterozygosity was...

In this study some bumble bees from the genus Bombus Latreille, which were collected from different localities in Central Anatolia, were analysed by horizontal starch-gel enzyme electrophoresis. Of the eight species examined, only Bombus (Thoracobombus) humilis were found to be polymorphic with low heterozygosity (Mean heterozygosity = 0.19±0.19),...

Some species from the genus Megabombus in Central Anatolia were considered. Eight species were determined from the subgenera Thoracobombus, Rhodobombus and Megabombus (s. str.) by both classical and morphometrical systematics. Synonymies. Turkish and general distributions and detailed drawings of the dorsal view of the male genitalia were given. As...

In this study, the flower choices of different bumblebee species in Ankara province regarding their associations among various parasites and micro-organism were determined. A total of 21 different species of the genera Bombus Latreille and Psithyrus Lepeletier were examined. The motile hypopus of the mite species Acarus farris (Oudemans, 1905) (Aca...

Species from the family Apidae (Hymenoptera) in Ankara province were considered. Nine species were determined from the subfamily Bombinae. Synonymies, the plants on which the specimen were caught, the Turkish and global distributions are given along with their distribution maps. Detailed drawings of the ventral view and photographs of the dorsal vi...

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.) are a widespread corbiculate lineage (Apinae: Corbiculata: Bombini), mostly found among temperate and alpine ecosystems. Approximately 260 species have been recognized and grouped recently into a simplified system of 15 subgenera. Most of the species are nest-building and primitively eusocial. Species of Bombus have been m...