Tilley CA, Oldroyd BP
School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney
Anim Behav. 1997 Dec;54(6):1483-90. doi: 10.1006/anbe.1997.0546.
Queens from three colonies of feral honey bees, Apis mellifera were removed and placed in separate nucleus colonies. For each colony, eggs and larvae were taken from the nucleus and placed in the main hive on each of 3-4 consecutive weeks. Workers in the queenless parts selected young larvae to rear as queens. Queen pupae, together with the surrounding worker pupae, were removed from each colony and analysed at two to three microsatellite loci to determine their paternity. In all three colonies, the paternity of larvae chosen by the bees to rear as queens was not a random sample of the paternities in the worker brood, with certain subfamilies being over-represented in queens. These results support an important prediction of kin selection theory: when colonies are queenless, unequal relatedness within colonies could lead to the evolution of reproductive competition, that is some subfamilies achieving greater reproductive success than others. The mechanism by which such dominance is achieved could be through a system of kin recognition and nepotism, but we conclude that genetically based differential attractiveness of larvae for rearing as queens is more likely.Copyright 1997 The Association for the Study of Animal BehaviourCopyright 1997The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
从三个野生蜜蜂蜂群（意大利蜜蜂）中取出蜂王，并将其放置在单独的小蜂群中。对于每个蜂群，在连续3 - 4周的每周，从小蜂群中取出卵和幼虫，并放置在主蜂箱中。无蜂王部分的工蜂选择年轻幼虫培育成蜂王。从每个蜂群中取出蜂王蛹以及周围的工蜂蛹，并在两到三个微卫星位点进行分析，以确定它们的父系。在所有三个蜂群中，蜜蜂选择培育成蜂王的幼虫的父系并非工蜂幼虫父系的随机样本，某些亚家族在蜂王中过度代表。这些结果支持了亲缘选择理论的一个重要预测：当蜂群无蜂王时，蜂群内不平等的亲缘关系可能导致生殖竞争的进化，即一些亚家族比其他亚家族获得更大的生殖成功。实现这种优势的机制可能是通过亲缘识别和裙带关系系统，但我们得出结论，基于遗传的幼虫作为蜂王培育的差异吸引力更有可能。版权所有1997动物行为研究协会版权所有1997动物行为研究协会。
