Seminal fluid compromises visual perception in honeybee queens reducing their survival during additional mating flights

eLife

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[1] ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia;ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia;Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia;Centre for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER), Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, United States;Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark;School of Animal Biology and UWA Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia;

关键词: social insects;    sexual conflict;    RNA-sequencing;    neurotranscriptomics;    artificial insemination;    Apis mellifera;    Other;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.45009

来源: publisher

【 摘 要 】

10.7554/eLife.45009.001Queens of social insects make all mate-choice decisions on a single day, except in honeybees whose queens can conduct mating flights for several days even when already inseminated by a number of drones. Honeybees therefore appear to have a unique, evolutionarily derived form of sexual conflict: a queen’s decision to pursue risky additional mating flights is driven by later-life fitness gains from genetically more diverse worker-offspring but reduces paternity shares of the drones she already mated with. We used artificial insemination, RNA-sequencing and electroretinography to show that seminal fluid induces a decline in queen vision by perturbing the phototransduction pathway within 24–48 hr. Follow up field trials revealed that queens receiving seminal fluid flew two days earlier than sister queens inseminated with saline, and failed more often to return. These findings are consistent with seminal fluid components manipulating queen eyesight to reduce queen promiscuity across mating flights.

【 授权许可】

CC BY