Hi Joe
Sorry about the delay in replying, I have been preparing for a three day
conference and as usual... I am way behind schedule :-)
First a mild warning about what morphometry can and cannot do, it is
only useful in conjunction with behavioural records from the colonies
assessed and can only be applied where biometric data has been
ascertained as particular to the species concerned (Ruttner characters).
> "wing length is linearly correlated with body size".
I would qualify that by adding 'within the same strain', but I would
further comment that no single parameter should ever be used for
classification... This is a trade off, the more data you collect the
more reliable the conclusions, but the more work is involved. The 'F' in
FABIS stands for 'fast' and that is because the procedure has been
ruthlessly simplified, once a simple procedure gives pointers to
candidate colonies, more detailed assessments can, and should, be made.
Wing length is helpful in FABIS, but for other purposes will not prove
reliable without correlation with other features.
> if the fore-wing would be the one to measure here.
Most commonly, but some studies use both and some differentiate between
right wings and left wings, yet others average out left and right and so
on....
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/wingmeasurement.html
Additional measurements that may prove helpful are the lengths of wing
veins, some angles between wing veins and some ratios of lengths or
angles. There are some detailed data sets that are due to Tom Rinderer
and some of his colleagues and students, I don't have the references to
hand, but Tom is a helpful guy and he is approachable.
> Are wings measured with a projection slide screen
> or under a microscope and what magnification?
Both methods are used, although projection methods use a solid wall
rather than a screen, but these days most wings are scanned with a high
resolution scanner and the resulting images are fed into a plotting
application that records the points and calculates all of the parameters
automatically.
These are available for free download in various places like my site,
BIBBA site and GBBG website, there are other, more sophisticated,
applications that you will need to pay for, but they are not very expensive.
Preparation of wings for projection is on...
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/wingmounting.html
>Is the FABIS method available on your site?
No, but you can find it here...
http://www.beesource.com/pov/ahb/fabismanual.htm
Having started this post with some warnings, I will also end it by
saying that the results you get are only as good as the information that
has formed the database that you are making your comparisons to.
You started your questions by mentioning...
> there were five possible quantitative trait loci that
> effects drone size, and a possible 4 QTLs that affected
> worker size.
That is only a fraction of the information, you need to know the numbers
of possible alleles that can fit at each of these locations and what
happens when the various possible combinations of these alleles do
actually occur.
Although FABIS is not on the agenda, you can learn about morphometry at
the Gormanston Summer School, which I will be plugging at various times
during the year. Should there be a demand, and if this demand is
recognised early enough, maybe FABIS could be included at Gormanston,
but having mentioned it as a possibility, I must also say that I do not
have the authority to make it happen.
Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
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