Egg-size plasticity in Apis mellifera: Honey bee queens alter egg size in response to both genetic and environmental factors
Egg-size plasticity in Apis mellifera: Honey bee queens alter egg size in response to both genetic and environmental factors
复制标题
DOI：
10.1111/jeb.13589
复制
发表时间：
2020-02-03
影响因子：
2.1
通讯作者：
Rueppell, Olav
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Amiri, Esmaeil;Le, Kevin;Rueppell, Olav
社会进化导致了社会昆虫不同的生活史模式，但许多群体水平和个体特征，如卵的大小，没有得到充分的理解。为此，本研究通过一系列试验，研究了基因型、群体大小和群体营养对意大利蜜蜂蜂王产卵大小的影响。来自不同遗传种群的皇后在相似的环境条件下产生了显着不同的鸡蛋大小，表明鸡蛋大小的遗传变异允许适应性进化变化。进一步的调查显示，在大的殖民地女王所产生的鸡蛋始终小于在小殖民地所产生的鸡蛋，和女王动态调整鸡蛋的大小与殖民地的大小。同样，蚁后增加鸡蛋的大小，以应对食物剥夺。这些结果不能仅仅用在不同环境下产生的不同数量的卵来解释，而是反映了女王对殖民地条件的积极调整。因此，较大的鸡蛋经历了较高的后续生存比较小的鸡蛋，这表明蜜蜂蜂王可能会增加鸡蛋的大小在不利的条件下，以提高育雏生存和最大限度地减少昂贵的育雏护理的鸡蛋，未能成功地发展，从而节省能源在殖民地水平。蜜蜂卵大小的广泛可塑性和遗传变异对于理解社会背景下的生活史进化具有重要意义，并意味着蜜蜂中被忽视的生活史阶段可能具有跨代影响。
Social evolution has led to distinct life-history patterns in social insects, but many colony-level and individual traits, such as egg size, are not sufficiently understood. Thus, a series of experiments was performed to study the effects of genotypes, colony size and colony nutrition on variation in egg size produced by honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens. Queens from different genetic stocks produced significantly different egg sizes under similar environmental conditions, indicating standing genetic variation for egg size that allows for adaptive evolutionary change. Further investigations revealed that eggs produced by queens in large colonies were consistently smaller than eggs produced in small colonies, and queens dynamically adjusted egg size in relation to colony size. Similarly, queens increased egg size in response to food deprivation. These results could not be solely explained by different numbers of eggs produced in the different circumstances but instead seem to reflect an active adjustment of resource allocation by the queen in response to colony conditions. As a result, larger eggs experienced higher subsequent survival than smaller eggs, suggesting that honey bee queens might increase egg size under unfavourable conditions to enhance brood survival and to minimize costly brood care of eggs that fail to successfully develop, and thus conserve energy at the colony level. The extensive plasticity and genetic variation of egg size in honey bees has important implications for understanding life-history evolution in a social context and implies this neglected life-history stage in honey bees may have trans-generational effects.