Variation in male body size and reproductive allocation in the leafcutter ant Atta colombica: estimating variance components and possible trade-offs

Stürup, M.; Boer, Susanne P. A. den; Nash, David R.; Boomsma, Jacobus J.; Baer, Boris

doi:10.1007/s00040-010-0115-0

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Our findings therefore provide support for the trade-off hypothesis, implying that males maximize immunity in their germ line at the cost of their somatic tissue. This adds further empirical evidence for the trade-off hypothesis to what has already been published in ants and bees [15,25,38]. Our results are also in line with our previous work, where we found males to be highly susceptible to N. apis [31], but able to suppress the spread of the infection to their reproductive organs.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Seminal fluid of honeybees contains multiple mechanisms to combat infections of the sexually transmitted pathogen Nosema apis

Yan¹,

Grassl²,

Millar³

et al. 2016

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The societies of ants, bees and wasps are genetically closed systems where queens only mate during a brief mating episode prior to their eusocial life and males therefore provide queens with a lifetime supply of high-quality sperm. These ejaculates also contain a number of defence proteins that have been detected in the seminal fluid but their function and efficiency have never been investigated in great detail. Here, we used the honeybee Apis mellifera and quantified whether seminal fluid is able to combat infections of the fungal pathogen Nosema apis, a widespread honeybee parasite that is also sexually transmitted. We provide the first empirical evidence that seminal fluid has a remarkable antimicrobial activity against N. apis spores and that antimicrobial seminal fluid components kill spores in multiple ways. The protein fraction of seminal fluid induces extracellular spore germination, which disrupts the life cycle of N. apis, whereas the non-protein fraction of seminal fluid induces a direct viability loss of intact spores. We conclude that males provide their ejaculates with efficient antimicrobial molecules that are able to kill N. apis spores and thereby reduce the risk of disease transmission during mating. Our findings could be of broader significance to master honeybee diseases in managed honeybee stock in the future.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Seminal fluid of honeybees contains multiple mechanisms to combat infections of the sexually transmitted pathogen Nosema apis

Yan¹,

Grassl²,

Millar³

et al. 2016

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…The mass of virgin queens increases substantially after hatching, reaching an asymptote some days or weeks before environmental conditions allow a mating flight to take place (Boomsma et al, 1995) so also for gynes a reference curve plotting mass as a function of body size (e.g., pronotum weight) would be desirable for future work. However, gyne (and male) weights differ across years and colonies (Stürup et al, 2011;Fjerdingstad and Boomsma, 1997), and mating flights of A. colombica take place at night, with their onset hard to predict, so that we were unable to collect such reference curves when we did the AI work. Even if these data would have been available, we could only have used them in a post hoc manner.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, the sequence of events during natural copulation is reasonably well known: The reproductive organs of males consist of two accessory testes which store the mature spermatozoa Baer and Boomsma, 2004) previously produced in the attached testes which have degenerated by the time males are sexually mature (Hölldobler and Bartz, 1985). The accessory testes are each accompanied by an accessory gland that provides a large part of the seminal fluid of ejaculates where it is vital for sperm viability (den Boer et al, 2008;den Boer et al, 2010;Stürup et al, 2011). The accessory testes and accessory glands open into the ejaculatory duct through which a mixture of sperm and seminal fluid is forcefully expelled upon ejaculation to reach the queen sexual tract via the endophallus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A technique to artificially inseminate leafcutter ants

2012

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Artificial insemination (AI), the instrumental transfer of semen from the male to female reproductive organs, offers excellent opportunities to study mating system adaptations as it allows paternity to be experimentally manipulated. AI techniques have been developed for many animals, but rarely for ants, where they would be particularly useful as most species do not mate under controlled lab conditions. Here, we describe an AI technique for Atta leafcutter ants involving (1) the collection of ejaculates via induction of natural ejaculation, (2) storage in glass capillaries, and (3) transfer to queens using a modified AI equip ment as used for honeybees. Queens were fixed and anesthetized in a queen holder, after which the sting chamber was opened with two steel hooks, the tip of the semen-containing glass capillary was inserted into the bursa copulatrix and the semen slowly expelled. Sperm was successfully stored in the spermatheca of queens, and some queens produced a small colony as a result. We could furthermore confirm the earlier observations that Atta semen is directly transferred to the spermatheca rather than to the bursa copulatrix as in most other eusocial insects. The technique that we present here can offer novel opportunities to study mating events such as sperm transfer, sperm competition, and cryptic female choice in ants. At present, the number of queens that produce colonies after AI remains low. However, this number will likely increase, as our results indicate that rearing conditions after AI influence colony founding success of artificially inseminated Atta queens.

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“…A first explanation could be that ejaculate sizes are variable and cannot be equalized by the queen in the short time frame between insemination and storage. Indeed, very large differences in sperm complement size have been found in A. colombica, both at the colony level and across individual males (Fjerdingstad and Boomsma, 1997;Stürup et al, 2011). Second, ejaculates could achieve different competitive success in being stored, depending on some intrinsic measure of quality (potentially influenced by the queen's reproductive environment).…”

Section: Other Factors That May Regulate Paternity Skewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The clear sequence of AG secretion first, followed by sperm, AT secretion and a small mating plug in A. colombica, suggests that the first male to mate with a queen might have an advantage over subsequent males as his sperm will not meet rival AG secretion already present in the spermatheca and his mating plug might delay the arrival of such harmful fluids when the queen mates a second time. In addition, being the first male to mate with a queen might be advantageous as a spermatheca has the capacity to store only a fraction more than what a single ejaculate can provide (Fjerdingstad and Boomsma, 1997;Stürup et al, 2011). inferred that a first male to mate with the queen stores on average twice the number of sperm than any subsequent male.…”

Section: Other Factors That May Regulate Paternity Skewmentioning

confidence: 99%