Travenzoli, Natália MartinsCardoso, Danon ClemesWerneck, Hugo de AzevedoSalomão, Tânia Maria FernandesTavares, Mara GarciaLopes, Denilce Meneses2020-05-182020-05-182019TRAVENZOLI, N. M. et al. The evolution of haploid chromosome numbers in Meliponini. PLoS ONE, v. 14, n. 10, p. e0224463, 2019. Disponível em: <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0224463>. Acesso em: 10 mar. 2020.1544-9173http://www.repositorio.ufop.br/handle/123456789/12210It is thought that two evolutionary mechanisms gave rise to chromosomal variation in bees: the first one points to polyploidy as the main cause of chromosomal evolution, while the second, Minimum Interaction Theory (MIT), is more frequently used to explain chromosomal changes in Meliponini and suggests that centric fission is responsible for variations in karyotype. However, differences in chromosome number between Meliponini and its sister taxa and in the karyotype patterns of the Melipona genus cannot be explained by MIT, suggesting that other events were involved in chromosomal evolution. Thus, we assembled cytogenetical and molecular information to reconstruct an ancestral chromosome number for Meliponini and its sister group, Bombini, and propose a hypothesis to explain the evolutionary pathways underpinning chromosomal changes in Meliponini. We hypothesize that the common ancestor shared by the Meliponini and Bombini tribes possessed a chromosome number of n = 18. The karyotype with n = 17 chromosomes was maintained in Meliponini, and variations of haploid numbers possibly originated through additional Robertsonian fissions and fusions. Thus, the low chromosome number would not be an ancestral condition, as predicted by MIT. We then conclude that Robertsonian fission and fusions are unlikely to be the cause of chromosomal rearrangements that originated the current karyotypes in Meliponini.en-USabertoArtigo publicado em periodicoThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Fonte: o próprio artigo.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224463