Thanks for all the feedback on eye color. I would say that it has nothing to do with feral bee colonies, except it does. The point being that phenotypes are retained irrespective of their adaptive value. Eye color may have had an adaptive benefit at one time or for one group, but eye color today does not. 

It could have been retained because 1) it's a attractive; 2) pleiotropic effect (linked to another important trait); 3) neutral mutation. Surely one would not suggest that eye color today provides any survival benefit, any more than it matters whether honey bees are golden or black. But don't take my word for it—

> The relationship of SNPs to normal variation in pigmentary variation in Europeans has been studied by numerous research groups, with reported associations for lighter eye color and brown hair color, but such effects are not always detectable. Another SNP, rs1393350:G/A, strongly correlated with the SNP rs1126809, is correlated with skin, hair, and eye color. The rs1393350:A polymorphism is associated with blue versus green eye color, blond versus brown hair, and skin sensitivity to the sun. However, despite the pleiotropic effect of rs1393350 on pigmentation traits, no positive selection based on population divergence or extended haplotype homozygosity was found. 

Citation: Brancato, D.; Coniglio, E.; Bruno, F.; Agostini, V.; Saccone, S.; Federico, C. Forensic DNA Phenotyping: Genes and Genetic Variants for Eye Color Prediction. Genes 2023, 14, 1604. https:// doi.org/10.3390/genes14081604

In other words, simply because a trait exists or does not exist in an individual or even a population, this does not therefor indicate an adaptive benefit. Some things are just different, due to mutations and stochastic variation. 

PLB

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html