The mountain bees of the Kilimanjaro region and their relation to neighbouring bee populations

Abstract

Summary — To study the nature of transition from one subspecies to another in a region without geographic barriers, 27 samples of honey bees were collected in the region of Arusha, Tanzania, at altitudes ranging from 800 to 2800 m, and morphometrically analyzed. Gradients (Fig. 3). Diese Gruppierung wird durch eine Diskriminanzanalyse bestätigt (Fig. 4) (Fig. 5) (Fig. 3)

Mountain honeybees of Africa

“…These results do not put into question the findings that the high altitude bees of Kenya and Tanzania (the original A. m. monticola) can be morphometrically and allozymically distinguished from their lower altitude neighbours in very fine space scale studies [18][19][20]. Rather, the general case is simply that the magnitude of difference between the high and low altitude bees of transects 1 and 6 (Ethiopia and Lesotho) happen to be significantly greater than is the case in Tanzania or Kenya.…”

“…Other discrepancies concern the high altitude mountain bees themselves, especially those regarded as A. m. monticola [1,19,20,30,31]. The first point is that those high altitude bees of Tanzania and Kenya were undetectable as a distinct group in other…”

“…There were, however, forms of intermediate size between these bees and other smaller bees lower down the mountains which were named A. m. scutellata. Ruttner [31,32], Meixner [18] and Meixner et al [20] subsequently extended these studies with multivariate techniques and concluded that "the distinct monticola areas of today represent the refugia of a former much larger coherent distribution across all of the highlands of East Africa" [19,31]. This equates to a concept of an archipelago of relictual bees constituting the subspecies A. m. monticola.…”

“…This equates to a concept of an archipelago of relictual bees constituting the subspecies A. m. monticola. This interpretation was supported by additional analyses of allozymes coupled to morphometric analyses [19,20]. However, evidence for such an archipelago (as opposed to the Tanzanian case) of A. m. monticola type bees using allozymic [21,33], morphometric and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) [8,10,33,34] analyses of honeybees of other mountainous systems in Africa were equivocal in this regard.…”

Population structure and morphometric variance of the Apis mellifera scutellata group of honeybees in Africa

“…With increasing altitude the southern mountain bees (Nyika and Drakensberg) become more yellow in overall colouration while in the northern mountain bees the trend is to darker colouration with increasing altitude. It is possible that the high mountain bees do in fact constitute a unique subspecies A. m. monticola distinct from A. m. scutellata at lower altitudes as proposed by Ruttner (1988) and Meixner et al (1989). However, final resolution of this problem will require a critical DNA analysis.…”