Multiple nuptial flights, sperm transfer and the evolution of extreme polyandry in honeybee queens

Schlüns, Helge; Moritz, Robin F. A.; Neumann, Peter; Kryger, Per; Koeniger, Gudrun

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2004.11.005

Cited by 112 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Paternity was determined by analyzing seven microsatellite loci (Ap033, Ap068, A079, A113, Ap226, Ap256 and Ap289), which are highly variable and sufficient to assign a worker to a patriline in colonies with ten or more patrilines (Solignac et al 2003;Schlü ns et al 2005). For each marker, the forward primer was labelled with one of four fluorescent phosphoramidites so that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products could be separated by size and fluorescence.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No intracolonial nepotism during colony fissioning in honey bees

2009

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Most species of social insects have singly mated queens, but in some species each queen mates with numerous males to create a colony whose workers belong to multiple patrilines. This colony genetic structure creates a potential for intracolonial nepotism. One context with great potential for such nepotism arises in species, like honey bees, whose colonies reproduce by fissioning. During fissioning, workers might nepotistically choose between serving a young (sister) queen or the old (mother) queen, preferring the former if she is a full-sister but the latter if the young queen is only a half-sister. We examined three honeybee colonies that swarmed, and performed paternity analyses on the young (immature) queens and samples of workers who either stayed with the young queens in the nest or left with the mother queen in the swarm. For each colony, we checked whether patrilines represented by immature queens had higher proportions of staying workers than patrilines not represented by immature queens. We found no evidence of this. The absence of intracolonial nepotism during colony fissioning could be because the workers cannot discriminate between full-sister and half-sister queens when they are immature, or because the costs of behaving nepotistically outweigh the benefits.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No intracolonial nepotism during colony fissioning in honey bees

2009

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“…Single mating by females appears to be the norm for most bumblebees (Schmid-Hempel and SchmidHempel, 2000), but there are exceptions (Bombus hypnorum; Paxton et al, 2001). Honeybees are highly polyandrous (Schlüns et al, 2005), whereas stingless bees are typically monoandrous (Paxton et al, 1999;Peters et al, 1999). Given this disparity in female mating frequency, it is notable that both honeybees and stingless bees are exceptional in that males only mate once (Roubik, 1989;Koeniger, 1991); whereas, for most species, males probably mate repeatedly (Paxton, 2005).…”

Section: Mating Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation ecology of bees: populations, species and communities

2009

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-Recent concerns regarding the decline of plant and pollinator species, and the impact on ecosystem functioning, has focused attention on the local and global threats to bee diversity. As evidence for bee declines is now accumulating from over broad taxonomic and geographic scales, we review the role of ecology in bee conservation at the levels of species, populations and communities. Bee populations and communities are typified by considerable spatiotemporal variation; whereby autecological traits, population size and growth rate, and plant-pollinator network architecture all play a role in their vulnerability to extinction. As contemporary insect conservation management is broadly based on species-and habitattargeted approaches, ecological data will be central to integrating management strategies into a broader, landscape scale of dynamic, interconnected habitats capable of delivering bee conservation in the context of global environmental change.conservation / biodiversity / population / community / plant-pollinator

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“…Queens, on the other hand, have the potential of long reproductive lives during which they can realize astonishing levels of fertility without ever replenishing the sperm that they stored during a single maiden mating event (Baer, 2005;den Boer et al, 2009a;Keller and Genoud, 1997;Pamilo, 1991). To accommodate such high demands for viable sperm, queens possess specialized organs known as spermathecae allowing them to keep sperm alive den Boer et al, 2010den Boer et al, , 2009bHolman et al, 2011;Kronauer and Boomsma, 2007;Schlüns et al, 2005;Shuker and Simmons, 2014), and sophisticated mechanisms to use just a few sperm to fertilize each egg (den Boer et al, 2009a). These principles of diverging male and female life-spans and life-histories evolved early during eusocial evolution (Boomsma, 2007(Boomsma, , 2013Hughes et al, 2008), and later developed towards spectacular extremes in lineages with very large and long-lived colonies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%