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From:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 29 Oct 2023 11:41:14 -0400
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> could we refer to their descendents as "wild type"? 

By introducing the term wild-type, we are opening a new can of worms. This term is much more context dependent than even the term feral. I worked with laboratory mice and we routinely purchased "C57 wild-type" mice. These were far from being wild, they were decidedly tame. A few times we purchased other varieties (such as CAST, see note below*) which were the exact opposite: they were jittery, jumped out of the cages (then we had to get down on our hands and knees and catch the buggers), often they wouldn't mate (the whole purpose of having them). C57s were just the opposite: calm, easily handled, and would produce large litters every few weeks. On the other hand, many domesticated species no longer exist as actual "wild types." The ancestors of many of them have long since gone extinct. So the term "wild type" usually refers to "bog standard," etc. Such as here:

> Experiments were conducted in Sheffield, UK, in May 2000 using bees from three anarchistic (A) and three wild-type (WT) source colonies housed in standard Langstroth hive equipment. The queens heading these colonies had been imported from Australia, and had been introduced the previous season. This allowed complete replacement of workers. The A queens were the results of five generations of selection for the anarchistic syndrome (Oldroyd and Osborne 1999) and were closely related but not sisters. The WT queens were standard Australian commercial stock of Italian lineage and were probably half-sisters. — Regulation of ovary activation in worker honey-bees (Apis mellifera): larval signal production and adult response thresholds differ between anarchistic and wild-type bees.
 
* CAST/EiJ and CASA/RkJ (Stock No. 000735) were derived from wild mice trapped in Thailand. Wild-derived mice are genetically distinct from common laboratory mice for a number of complex phenotypic characteristics and are valuable tools for genetic mapping, evolution and systematics research.

PLB

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