A novel type of mirror-image flowers caused by lateral bending of the floral tube in a bumblebee-pollinated plant

Ling, Shao-Jun; Tao, Lu; Ren, Ming‐Xun

doi:10.1016/j.flora.2020.151694

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…Bumblebee species possess a variety of traits such as tongue length, buzz-pollinating behavior, and adaptation to low pollen or low environmental temperature foraging, making them efficient pollinators in agricultural and natural ecosystems [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Like most Hymenoptera, Bumblebees have a haplodiploidy sex-determination system, a key feature in the evolution of sex determination in Hymenoptera [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worker-Born Males Are Smaller but Have Similar Reproduction Ability to Queen-Born Males in Bumblebees

Zhao

Liu

Zhang

et al. 2021

Insects

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Queen-worker conflict over the reproduction of males exists in the majority of haplodiplioidy hymenpteran species such as bees, wasps, and ants, whose workers lose mating ability but can produce haploid males in colony. Bumblebee is one of the representatives of primitively eusocial insects with plastic division labor and belongs to monandrous and facultative low polyandry species that have reproductive totipotent workers, which are capable of competing with mother queen to produce haploid males in the queenright colony compared to higher eusocial species, e.g., honeybees. So, bumblebees should be a better material to study worker reproduction, but the reproductive characteristics of worker-born males (WMs) remain unclear. Here, we choose the best-studied bumblebee Bombus terrestris to evaluate the morphological characteristics and reproductive ability of WMs from the queenless micro-colonies. The sexually matured WMs showed smaller in forewing length and weight, relatively less sperm counts but equally high sperm viability in comparison with the queen-born males (QMs) of the queenright colony. Despite with smaller size, the WMs are able to successfully mate with the virgin queens in competition with the QMs under laboratory conditions, which is quite different from the honeybees reported. In addition, there was no difference in the colony development, including the traits such as egg-laying rate, colony establishment rate, and populations of offspring, between the WM- and the QM-mated queens. Our study highlights the equivalent reproductive ability of worker-born males compared to that of queens, which might exhibit a positive application or special use of bumblebee rearing, especially for species whose males are not enough for copulation. Further, our finding contributes new evidence to the kin selection theory and suggests worker reproduction might relate to the evolution of sociality in bees.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worker-Born Males Are Smaller but Have Similar Reproduction Ability to Queen-Born Males in Bumblebees

Zhao

Liu

Zhang

et al. 2021

Insects

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An overview of the pollination interactions between the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) and insects in Asia

Appalasamy¹,

Arumugam²,

Rao³

et al. 2023

Eur. J. Entomol.

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http://www.eje.cz unreported pollinators of angiosperms and new species are continuously being reported for ginger plants.Keywords used to fi nd articles on ginger plants (Zingiberaceae), e.g. Zingiberaceae-pollinator interaction, ginger and pollinators, and Zingiberaceae and pollinators, only found one to 6000 articles in the above-mentioned academic websites. The online searches indicate that there are very few plant-animal interaction studies focusing exclusively on Zingiberaceae. Therefore, for a better understanding this review focuses on the Zingiberaceae-pollinator interaction in Asian Zingiberaceae. In addition, important fundamental aspects of the plant-biotic pollinator interactions are also presented in order to have a better general understanding of the plant-pollinator interaction.The plant-pollinator interaction is poorly recorded for Zingiberaceae (common name: gingers), which are better

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A novel type of mirror-image flowers caused by lateral bending of the floral tube in a bumblebee-pollinated plant

Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

Worker-Born Males Are Smaller but Have Similar Reproduction Ability to Queen-Born Males in Bumblebees

Worker-Born Males Are Smaller but Have Similar Reproduction Ability to Queen-Born Males in Bumblebees

An overview of the pollination interactions between the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) and insects in Asia

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