Sampling Error, Effective Paternity, and Estimating the Genetic Structure of Honey Bee Colonies (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

By David R. Tarpy, D. Nielsen. 2002

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Multiple mating by social Hymenopteran queens significantly lowers the average genetic relatedness among female nestmates, which subsequently affects a wide range of social behaviors. Honey bees (Apis spp.) have among the highest levels of multiple mating in social insects, and have received the most empirical effort to quantify the effective paternities within colonies. We reviewed 24 studies that estimated paternity frequencies of individual, naturally-mated honey bee queens using molecular techniques. We summarize the methods used to estimate effective paternity (me) and intracolonial genetic relatedness (G). We then concentrate on the effect of sample size on estimates of me using Monte Carlo simulations. The results demonstrate that me estimates may vary significantly as a result of sampling error, particularly at low worker sample sizes and high paternity numbers. From these simulations, we arbitrarily define a “threshold” worker sample size to effective paternity ratio (n/me) that, at best, reduces the error of estimating me to less than one subfamily. The literature review illustrates that no study with an n/me ratio above this threshold estimates an me above 15 subfamilies. Finally, we briefly discuss other factors that may serve to over-estimate me, including numerous sampling biases. We conclude that although 152 colonies in the various species of Apis have been tested, the extremity of their paternity frequencies may be somewhat exaggerated, although not drastically.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8a6ba42f564b3cd1febfaf989a1b97e3b74bcc25

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Citations in the corpus

Sperm limitation and the evolution of extreme polyandry in honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) (2004, background): “The effective number of matings may be an important factor for the colony fitness under the genetic variance hypotheses (Tarpy and Nielsen 2002).”
Levels of selection in a social insect: a review of conflict and cooperation during honey bee (Apis mellifera) queen replacement (2004, background): “These two potential points of conflict, however, do not translate into actual conflict in most colonies because honey bee queens mate with several males (see Oldroyd et al. 1998; Tarpy and Nielsen 2002).”
Standard methods for instrumental insemination of Apis mellifera queens (2013, background): “Queens are highly polyandrous and mate in flight with an average of 10 to 20 drones (Tarpy & Nielsen, 2002) at congregation areas consisting of 10,000 to 30,000 drones from diverse genetic sources (Koeniger 1986).”
The physical, insemination, and reproductive quality of honey bee queens (Apis mellifera L.) (2011, methodology): “Management practices may also significantly affect the overall quality of queens across sources, as different genetic stocks (see Tarpy and Nielsen, 2002 ), chemical treatments (Haarmann et al., 2002; Pettis et al., 2004), and hive environments (Woyke, 1983; da Silva et al., 1995 )a re all signific”
A scientific note on the revised estimates of effective paternity frequency in Apis (2004, methodology): “The data set for this table derives largely from that of Tarpy and Nielsen (2002) with some recent additions (Arnold et al., 2002; Châline et al., 2003; Gilley, 2003; Takahashi and Nakamura, 2003; Wattanachaiyingcharoen et al., 2003).”