Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Departamento de Apicultura Tropical, CCBA Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, km 15. Carr. Mérida-Xmatkuil, Cp. 97000 Mérida, Mexico.
Biol Lett. 2022 Jan;18(1):20210498. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0498. Epub 2022 Jan 26.
stingless bees display a paradoxical overproduction of queens, which are later eliminated by nest-mate workers. Mechanistically, it was suggested that the monoterpenoid geraniol deposited into newly provisioned cells by adult bees would cause larvae to develop into queens in . This system could be evolutionarily stable if many of these new queens were to leave the nest and parasitize other genetically unrelated colonies nearby, as was shown to occur in a congeneric species Here, we use microsatellite markers to test whether queen overproduction could be a strategy by which adult workers control the caste fate of the developing larvae to export copies of their own genes to the rest of the population via queen parasitism in . In addition, we re-examined whether artificially increasing the levels of geraniol indeed caused larvae to develop as queens rather than workers. Contrary to our prediction, we found no evidence for queen parasitism in and observed no effect of geraniol on the rearing of new queens. Together, these results support the original 'tragedy of the commons' hypothesis for queen overproduction in bees, where individual larvae selfishly bias their development towards the queen pathway according to their best evolutionary interests.
无刺蜜蜂表现出一种蜂王过度繁殖的矛盾现象，这些蜂王后来会被巢内工蜂消灭。从机制上讲，人们认为成年蜜蜂将单萜香叶醇沉积到新供应的细胞中，会导致幼虫发育成蜂王。如果许多新蜂王离开巢穴并寄生在附近遗传上无关的其他群体中，这种系统可能是进化稳定的，这在一个同种的物种中得到了证明。在这里，我们使用微卫星标记来测试蜂王过度繁殖是否可能是成年工蜂控制发育中幼虫的社会等级命运的一种策略，通过蜂王寄生将自己的基因副本输出到种群的其余部分。此外，我们重新检验了人工增加香叶醇水平是否确实会导致幼虫发育成蜂王而不是工蜂。与我们的预测相反，我们在中没有发现蜂王寄生的证据，也没有观察到香叶醇对新蜂王饲养的影响。这些结果共同支持了中蜂王过度繁殖的原始“公地悲剧”假说，即根据其最佳进化利益，个体幼虫自私地将其发育偏向蜂王途径。
