Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Laboratory, Ecology and Evolution, University of Sydney, Macleay Building A12, New South Wales 2006, Australia
Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Laboratory, Ecology and Evolution, University of Sydney, Macleay Building A12, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2018 Nov 28;14(11):20180670. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2018.0670.
Hymenoptera are haplodiploid: females arise from fertilized, diploid eggs, while males arise from unfertilized, haploid eggs. The cytogenetic mechanisms underlying haplodiploidy enable remarkable phenomena including female cloning, male cloning and gynandromorphy (sex mosaics). We collected 11 newly emerged putative gynandromorph honeybees from a single colony, assessed the sex of various tissues morphologically and determined the genetic origin (maternal or paternal) of each tissue by genotyping. Ten bees were gynandromorphs with one to three distinct paternal origins. Remarkably, one bee carried no maternal alleles. This bee had female organs throughout, and arose from the fusion of two sperm nuclei. This is the first reported case in the Hymenoptera of sperm fusion resulting in a female, emphasizing the flexibility for social insect reproduction and potentially novel colony-level social structures.
雌性由受精卵（二倍体）发育而来，而雄性由未受精卵（单倍体）发育而来。单倍二倍体的细胞遗传学机制使一些显著现象成为可能，包括雌性克隆、雄性克隆和雌雄嵌合体（性嵌合体）。我们从一个单一的蜂群中收集了 11 只新出现的拟雌雄嵌合体蜜蜂，通过形态学评估了各种组织的性别，并通过基因分型确定了每个组织的遗传起源（母系或父系）。其中 10 只蜜蜂是雌雄嵌合体，具有一到三个不同的父系起源。值得注意的是，有一只蜜蜂没有母系等位基因。这只蜜蜂全身都是雌性器官，由两个精子核融合而成。这是膜翅目昆虫中首例报告的精子融合导致雌性的案例，强调了社会昆虫繁殖的灵活性，并可能产生新的群体级社会结构。
