Blair Sampson writes: > > Can anyone out there clearify what is meant by an "africanized > honey bee". {edited} > Since aggressiveness is a highly adaptive trait at least for bees > under duress, the proliferation of "africanized" genes poses a real > danger to domestic honey bee populations. {edited} > To put it more succinctly, "African bee"= physical > migration; "Africanized bee" = genetic migration. The latter being of > greater concern to northern apiculturalists. Given that genomes undergo recombination, and the agressiveness is affected by genetic factors, and that agressiveness may be adaptive in feral colonies, What are the chances that AHB morphology and mitotypes etc may stop advancing in the southern U.S., but that the genes for colony defensiveness will carry on north? Would there be any point in identifying AHB genomes when they recombine every generation? Maybe just an agressiveness assay (or an assay of the traits of concern) would do the trick? Can a population geneticist throw some light on this topic e.g. from Argentinian data? Martin H. Villet Department of Zoology and Entomology Telephone: 27 [0]461 318-527 Rhodes University Grahamstown 6140 RSA Internet: [log in to unmask]