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Date: | Sun, 27 Nov 2022 13:09:33 -0500 |
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I have been saying this for a number of years but it's encouraging to see someone else thought of it, and quite a while back:
> A number of the commonly recognized honeybee "races" should be regarded merely as color polymorphs. These include: a) the yellow central African bees and the dark bees from the Cape of Good Hope, b) the yellow Sahara bees and the dark North African bees, c) The yellow Italian bees and the dark (Carniolan) bees of southeastern Europe. — E. J. Dupraw. Non-Linnean Taxonomy and the Systematics of Honeybees. Systematic Zoology , Mar., 1965, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1965), pp. 1-24
In particular, I view the Italians & the Carniolans as color variants. But also it has been asserted that capensis and scutellata can't easily be distinguished genetically and the former may be a variant of the latter rather than a separate "sub-species." Recent work states:
> Tergite color and average ovariole number were the most important features for discriminating between the two subspecies. — BUSTAMANTE, et al. Comparing classical and geometric morphometric methods to discriminate between the South African honey bee subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata and Apis mellifera capensis (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Apidologie (2020) 51:123–136
PLB
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