Tarpy David R, Seeley Thomas D
Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7613, Raleigh, NC 27695-7613, USA.
Naturwissenschaften. 2006 Apr;93(4):195-9. doi: 10.1007/s00114-006-0091-4. Epub 2006 Mar 3.
We studied the relationship between genetic diversity and disease susceptibility in honeybee colonies living under natural conditions. To do so, we created colonies in which each queen was artificially inseminated with sperm from either one or ten drones. Of the 20 colonies studied, 80% showed at least one brood disease. We found strong differences between the two types of colonies in the infection intensity of chalkbrood and in the total intensity of all brood diseases (chalkbrood, sacbrood, American foulbrood, and European foulbrood) with both variables lower for the colonies with higher genetic diversity. Our findings demonstrate that disease can be an important factor in the ecology of honeybee colonies and they provide strong support for the disease hypothesis for the evolution of polyandry by social insect queens.
我们研究了自然条件下生活的蜂群中遗传多样性与疾病易感性之间的关系。为此，我们创建了蜂群，其中每个蜂王都用来自一只或十只雄蜂的精子进行人工授精。在研究的20个蜂群中，80%至少出现了一种幼虫疾病。我们发现，两种类型的蜂群在白垩病的感染强度以及所有幼虫疾病（白垩病、囊状幼虫病、美洲幼虫腐臭病和欧洲幼虫腐臭病）的总强度方面存在显著差异，遗传多样性较高的蜂群这两个变量的值较低。我们的研究结果表明，疾病可能是蜂群生态中的一个重要因素，并且为群居昆虫蜂王多雄交配进化的疾病假说提供了有力支持。
