Two distances of forewing venation as estimates of wing size
Author(s)
Selim Dedej; Francesco Nazzi
Abstract
The length and width of the forewing have been widely used in studies of honey bee taxonomy. Because of natural damage or imperfect wing dissection these characters can be difficult to measure. Furthermore, the points at which these distances are taken are not clearly located on the forewing, which may cause a lack of precision in the measurement. For these reasons some authors have recently employed two distances between crossing points of venation instead of the length and width of the forewing in studies on fluctuating asymmetry (Brockner, 1976; Clarke et al., 1986) and honey bee taxonomy (Nazzi, 1992). In the latter, these distances, together with the other characters of the forewing, proved to be useful in discriminating between some races of Apis mellifera from the Mediterranean area.
