Worker's genetic diversity has no relation to pollen diversity in a honey bee colony (Apis mellifera L.)

Woyciechowski, Michał; Warakomska, Z.

doi:10.1007/bf02350060

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Nevertheless, the caste system hypothesis is unlikely to explain the origin of polyandry, because morphological differentiation among workers should take a long time to evolve. Furthermore, Woyciechowski and Warakomska (1994) showed that even in honeybees, genetic diversity between workers had no effect on the division of labor, and several authors have indicated that there is no convincing evidence that honeybee colonies with greater genetic diversity have higher survival or reproduction than those with low diversity (Oldroyd et al 1991(Oldroyd et al , 1993(Oldroyd et al , 1994Fuchs and Schade 1994). Therefore, it is difficult to explain the evolution of polyandry in eusocial Hymenoptera using this hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mating frequency, colony size, polyethism and sex ratio in fungus-growing ants (Attini)

Murakami

Higashi

Windsor

2000

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

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The mating frequency of queens was estimated for eight attine ant species, Myrmicocrypta ednaella, Apterostigma mayri, Cyphomyrmex costatus, C. rimosus (four lower attines), Trachymyrmex isthmicus, Sericomyrmex amabalis, Acromyrmex octospinosus and Atta colombica (four higher attines), and correlated to colony size, worker polyethism, and sex ratio. Mating frequency was calculated from within-colony relatedness estimated by CAP-PCR DNA fingerprinting. Most queens of lower attines and T. isthmicus mated with only one male, while those of the three higher attines mated with multiple males. Mating frequency was positively correlated with colony size. Polyethism among workers was dependent on worker age in lower attines but on body size in higher attines, suggesting some correlation between mating frequency (i.e., within-colony gene diversity) and caste complexity. The sex ratio was biased toward females in species where the mating frequency equaled one, but toward males in species where the mating frequency was greater than two. Changing in nest site from ground surface to deep underground may have facilitated the evolution of large colony size in Attini, and this may have resulted in the evolution of polyandry (a queen mates with multiple males). With the evolution of polyandry in higher attines, Atta and Acromyrmex in particular have generated high genetic diversity within their colonies and complex social structures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mating frequency, colony size, polyethism and sex ratio in fungus-growing ants (Attini)

Murakami

Higashi

Windsor

2000

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

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“…The differences found in these studies relate to foraging behaviour or apply to unnaturally small colonies, and do not directly address colony per formance. Woyciechowski & Warakomska (1994) showed that worker genetic diversity had no effect on the diversity of pollen collected. Evidence on this issue may also suffer from complications due to non-additive genetic effects.…”

Section: (C) D Ivision O F Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternity in eusocial Hymenoptera

Boomsma

Ratnieks

1996

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

398

185

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Variation in paternity frequency in colonies of eusocial insects has profound effects on the relatedness among offspring and on the genetic diversity of colonies. Data on queen ‘mating-frequency’ in eusocial Hymenoptera vary in both quality and the phase of the ‘mating’ process they address. Some are observational studies of the range or maximum number of copulations; others are derived from estimates of the number of sperm in males and queens; others use genetic techniques to determine the paternity of different males among female offspring. Only the latter data can be used to calculate relatedness among offspring females. Previous reviews drew attention to these problems, but their results have established the impression that high paternity frequencies are common, largely because multiple copulations are frequently observed. For ants, we show that: (i) the range of observed copulations overestimates effective paternity frequency; and (ii) the mean effective paternity frequency in 19 species, for which accurate data based on allozyme analysis of mother — offspring combinations are available, is only 1.16 (range 1-1.48). Over one third of these species have queens in which only one male contributes to paternity. Data from 34 species, which include less detailed genetic studies and four species studied using sperm counts, give similar results. Only two species, both Atta leaf cutter ants and both studied using data on sperm stored in queen spermathecas, appear to have effective insemination frequencies above two. Data on bees and wasps show a similar trend. We conclude that reliably documented high paternity or insemination frequencies (> 2) are currently restricted to one phylogenetically isolated and highly eusocial taxon each in ants, eusocial bees and wasps ( Atta, Apis and Vespula , respectively). This pattern justifies the working hypothesis that multiple mating, by lowering the relatedness between female offspring and thereby the benefits of reproductive helping behaviour, has not been a general constraint for the evolution of eusociality in the Hymenoptera. Using reliable data on paternity frequency and insemination, we re-analyse two factors that it has been suggested correlate with mating frequency: colony population and number of egg-laying queens per colony. We find the following. 1. There is a significant positive correlation between paternity/insemination frequency and colony size for monogynous ants, but not for polygynous ants. This result seems to support the ‘sperm limitation’ hypothesis, that queens which need to be highly fecund copulate multiply to store sufficient sperm. We note, however, that the same trend is expected when large and/or long-lived colonies profit more from having genetically diverse offspring. 2. There is no significant negative correlation between paternity/insemination frequency and number of queens per colony. However, when the analysis is restricted to species with large colonies and no intranidal mating, the correlation between paternity frequency and queen number becomes marginally significant. Several previous reviews have addressed the possible adaptive significance of multiple paternity. In contrast, and in keeping with the data that show single paternity to be frequent, we discuss selective reasons for single or low paternity. We compare the relative effects of multiple paternity and multiple maternity on genetic diversity within colonies and show that they are not equivalent, and we also discuss directions for future research on paternity issues in social insects.

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“…While a number of studies support a strong influence of kin structure in some contexts (e.g., Trivers and Hare 1976;Peters et al 1999;Reeve et al 2000;Tarpy 2003), others have failed to detect a clear association between social and genetic structure (e.g., Woyciechowski and Warakomska 1994;Heinze 1995;Brown and Keller 2000;Hammond et al 2003). In the following, we describe how kin structure is expected to affect life history traits in social Hymenoptera and briefly examine the evidence for or against such an influence.…”

Section: Haplodiploidy and Eusocialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this apparent specialization does not always directly result in a benefit for polyandrous colonies. For example, in some studies, the genetic diversity of a colony had no effect on pollen diversity (Woyciechowski and Warakomska 1994), honey yield, or colony size (Neumann and Moritz 2000). In another study, multiple mating was found to be associated with larger pollen and honey stores and a higher production of sexuals (Fuchs and Schade 1994).…”

Section: Kin Structure Division Of Labor and Disease Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Multilevel selection and social evolution of insect societies

Korb

Heınze

2004

Naturwissenschaften

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How sterile, altruistic worker castes have evolved in social insects and how they are maintained have long been central topics in evolutionary biology. With the advance of kin selection theory, insect societies, in particular those of haplodiploid bees, ants, and wasps, have become highly suitable model systems for investigating the details of social evolution and recently also how within-group conflicts are resolved. Because insect societies typically do not consist of clones, conflicts among nestmates arise, for example about the partitioning of reproduction and the allocation of resources towards male and female sexuals. Variation in relatedness among group members therefore appears to have a profound influence on the social structure of groups. However, insect societies appear to be remarkably robust against such variation: division of labor and task allocation are often organized in more or less the same way in societies with high as in those with very low nestmate relatedness. To explain the discrepancy between predictions from kin structure and empirical data, it was suggested that constraints-such as the lack of power or information-prevent individuals from pursuing their own selfish interests. Applying a multilevel selection approach shows that these constraints are in fact group-level adaptation preventing or resolving intracolonial conflict. The mechanisms of conflict resolution in insect societies are similar to those at other levels in the biological hierarchy (e.g., in the genome or multicellular organisms): alignment of interests, fair lottery, and social control. Insect societies can thus be regarded as a level of selection with novelties that provide benefits beyond the scope of a solitary life. Therefore, relatedness is less important for the maintenance of insect societies, although it played a fundamental role in their evolution.

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Worker's genetic diversity has no relation to pollen diversity in a honey bee colony (Apis mellifera L.)

Cited by 10 publications

References 19 publications

Mating frequency, colony size, polyethism and sex ratio in fungus-growing ants (Attini)

Mating frequency, colony size, polyethism and sex ratio in fungus-growing ants (Attini)

Paternity in eusocial Hymenoptera

Multilevel selection and social evolution of insect societies

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