Peters J M, Queller D C, Strassmann J E, Solís C R
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77251, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 1995 Apr 22;260(1357):7-12. doi: 10.1098/rspb.1995.0052.
Assigning offspring to parents is important for understanding the evolution of reproductive conflicts and cooperation, particularly in the model systems represented by social insects. Molecular genetic markers are often used to exclude, and occasionally used to assign, candidate parents. However, their use in social insects has been unsatisfactory so far because candidate mothers are often highly related and candidate fathers are unknown. Here, we show that microsatellite loci can be scored from each mother's stored sperm permitting effective maternity assignment. The theoretical power of this method is huge, and we demonstrate its practical utilization in this large-scale study of the wasp, Polistes annularis. All 219 genotyped daughters were either assigned to a unique mother or shown to be the progeny of an uncollected dead mother. The data reveal an unexpectedly high number of changes in reproductive dominance. Maternity assignments using this method should help solve many difficult questions in social evolution.
将后代与父母进行配对对于理解生殖冲突与合作的演化至关重要，特别是在以社会性昆虫为代表的模式系统中。分子遗传标记常常被用于排除候选亲本，偶尔也用于确定候选亲本。然而，到目前为止，它们在社会性昆虫中的应用并不理想，因为候选母亲之间往往亲缘关系很近，而候选父亲又未知。在此，我们表明可以从每个母亲储存的精子中对微卫星位点进行评分，从而实现有效的母系配对。这种方法的理论效力巨大，并且我们在对黄蜂金黄胡蜂的大规模研究中证明了其实际应用价值。所有219个已基因分型的女儿要么被确定为唯一一位母亲的后代，要么被证明是未被采集到的已死亡母亲的后代。数据揭示了生殖优势方面出乎意料的大量变化。使用这种方法进行母系配对应该有助于解决社会进化中的许多难题。
