NDLI: Differential reproductive success among subfamilies in queenless honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Martin, Caroline G. Oldroyd, Benjamin P. Beekman, Madeleine
Copyright Year	2004
Abstract	With very rare exceptions, queenright worker honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) forego personal reproduction and suppress reproduction by other workers, preferring to rear the queen’s sons. This is in stark contrast to colonies that have lost their queen and have failed to rear a replacement. Under these conditions workers activate their ovaries and lay many eggs that develop parthenogenetically into a final brood of males (drones) before the colony perishes. Interestingly, not all workers contribute equally to this final generation of drones in queenless colonies. Some subfamilies (workers that share the same father) contribute a disproportionately greater number of offspring than other subfamilies. Here we explore some of the mechanisms behind this reproductive competition among subfamilies. We determined the relative contribution of different subfamilies present in colonies to laying workers, eggs, larvae and pupae by genotyping samples of all life stages using a total of eight microsatellite loci. Our colonies were headed by free-mated queens and comprised 8–17 subfamilies and therefore differed significantly from colonies used in an earlier study investigating the same phenomena where colonies comprised an artificially low number of subfamilies. We show that, first, subfamilies vary in the speed with which they activate their ovaries after queen-loss and, second, that the survival of eggs to the larval stage is unequal among subfamilies suggesting that some subfamilies lay eggs that are more acceptable than others. However, there is no statistically significant difference among subfamilies in the survival of larvae to pupae, indicating that ovary activation and egg survival are the critical components to reproductive competition among subfamilies of queenless honeybee workers.
Starting Page	42
Ending Page	49
Page Count	8
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03405443
Journal	Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Volume Number	56
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	14320762
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2004-02-10
Publisher Place	Berlin, Heidelberg
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Honeybees Apis mellifera Worker reproduction Ovary activation Reproductive competition
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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