Worker reproduction in honey-bees (Apis) and the anarchic syndrome: a review
By Andrew B. Barron, Benjamin P. Oldroyd, Francis L. W. Ratnieks. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2001
144 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract. Honey-bees, Apis, are an important model system for investigating the evolution and maintenance of worker sterility. The queen is the main reproductive in a colony. Workers cannot mate, but they can lay unfertilized eggs, which develop into males if reared. Worker reproduction, while common in queenless colonies, is rare in queenright colonies, despite the fact that workers are more related to their own sons than to those of the queen. Evidence that worker sterility is enforced by 'worker policing' is reviewed and worker policing is shown to be widespread in Apis. We then discuss a rare behavioural syndrome, 'anarchy', in which substantial worker production of males occurs in queenright colonies. The level of worker reproduction in these anarchic colonies is far greater than in a normal queenright honey-bee colony. Anarchy is a counterstrategy against worker policing and an example of a 'cheating' strategy invading a cooperative system.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be1f892dd164e4154cbd24a3fcc0b1affa2be6c8
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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
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Citations in the corpus
- Conflict resolution in insect societies. (2006, background): “Direct evidence for actual sex-ratio conflict comes from studies showing that the sex ratio among pupae or adults is more female biased than the sex ratio among the eggs laid by the queen (4, 48, 62, 89, 122), implying that not all male eggs are reared.”
- Ovariole number—a predictor of differential reproductive success among worker subfamilies in queenless honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies (2006, background): “…in two instances only, in the Cape honeybee, A. mellifera capensis (Hepburn and Radloff 1998), especially when parasitizing A. mellifera scutellata colonies (Neumann and Moritz 2002), and in a rare mutant phenotype termed the ‘anarchistic’ bee (Montague and Oldroyd 1998; Barron et al. 2001).”
- Spite: Hamilton's unproven theory (2001, background): “Worker policing by egg eating has been found in honeybees (Ratnieks & Visscher 1989, Barron et al. 2001) and Vespinae wasps (Foster & Ratnieks 2000, Foster & Ratnieks 2001, Foster et al. 2001).”
- Queen and worker policing in the tree wasp Dolichovespula sylvestris (2005, background): “…was first discovered in the honey bee Apis mellifera (Ratnieks and Visscher 1989), and later in several other species of honeybees, ants and Vespinae wasps (reviewed by Ratnieks 2000; Barron et al. 2001; Foster and Ratnieks 2001c; Wenseleers et al. 2004a, 2004c; Ratnieks and Wenseleers 2005).”