Oi Cintia A, van Zweden Jelle S, Oliveira Ricardo C, Van Oystaeyen Annette, Nascimento Fabio S, Wenseleers Tom
Department of Biology, Laboratory of Socioecology & Social Evolution, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Departamento de Biologia da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
Bioessays. 2015 Jul;37(7):808-21. doi: 10.1002/bies.201400180. Epub 2015 Apr 27.
Queen pheromones, which signal the presence of a fertile queen and induce daughter workers to remain sterile, are considered to play a key role in regulating the reproductive division of labor of insect societies. Although queen pheromones were long thought to be highly taxon-specific, recent studies have shown that structurally related long-chain hydrocarbons act as conserved queen signals across several independently evolved lineages of social insects. These results imply that social insect queen pheromones are very ancient and likely derived from an ancestral signalling system that was already present in their common solitary ancestors. Based on these new insights, we here review the literature and speculate on what signal precursors social insect queen pheromones may have evolved from. Furthermore, we provide compelling evidence that these pheromones should best be seen as honest signals of fertility as opposed to suppressive agents that chemically sterilize the workers against their own best interests.
蜂王信息素，它表明有可育蜂王的存在并诱导工蜂女儿保持不育，被认为在调节昆虫社会的生殖分工中起关键作用。尽管长期以来人们认为蜂王信息素具有高度的分类特异性，但最近的研究表明，结构相关的长链碳氢化合物在几个独立进化的社会性昆虫谱系中作为保守的蜂王信号起作用。这些结果意味着社会性昆虫的蜂王信息素非常古老，可能源自它们共同的独居祖先中已经存在的祖先信号系统。基于这些新见解，我们在此回顾文献并推测社会性昆虫蜂王信息素可能从哪些信号前体进化而来。此外，我们提供了令人信服的证据，表明这些信息素最好被视为生育能力的诚实信号，而不是违背工蜂自身最大利益对其进行化学绝育的抑制因子。
