Chris Slade wrote:

>Why?  Generally creatures get bulkier the further they are from the
equator or sea level.  Or by 'these bees' you mean Amm.

No, I was wrong. A. m. m. and the others (carnica and ligustica) are
about the same size. Tropical Apis mellifera tends to be smaller. All
the African types tend to be smaller than the European ones.

For a thorough education on this topic you can slog through this paper:

"Phylogeographical autocorrelation of phenotypic evolution in honey
bees (Apis mellifera L.)" by  JOSEÂ ALEXANDRE FELIZOLA DINIZ-FILHO ,
STEFAN FUCHS & MARIA CRISTINA ARIAS

To summarize:

* Size correlates to latitude.

body size variables and the first principal component of
total values of the 39 characters tend to
have a large-scale geographical structure, with larger
subspecies occurring in Europe and smaller subspecies
in tropical Africa

* Wing venation shows change over time.

The characters of wing venation, on the other hand,
show a very high phylogenetic correlation, indicating an
elevated P component, but usually with lower spatial
patterns. This can be interpreted by neutral (nonadap-
tive) evolution, in which the magnitude of divergence is
proportional to time of divergence.

* Color is not correlated to anything.

Colour variation usually does not show a significant
correlation with either of the two referential dimensions
[neither latitude nor time]
This lack of correlation could result from small-scale
random variation in these traits


-- 
Peter L. Borst

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