Paternity skew in seven species of honeybees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis)

Abstract

-Honeybees (Apis) show an extremely polyandrous mating system. In general honeybee queens mate with at least ten drones. The reproductive success of the drones is usually biased giving rise to speculations of a first or last male advantage. Especially for A. andreniformis and A. florea a first male advantage was hypothesized due to the peculiar anatomy of their male genitalia. We reanalyzed data from the literature by using a sample size calibration method to survey the differences and similarities in paternity skew among species in the genus Apis. The paternity skew among seven honeybee species differed significantly, particularly due to the rare patrilines. The sorting algorithm, i.e. the ranking of the patrilines, had, however, a considerable effect on the paternity skew pattern. The frequent patrilines appeared to be similarly distributed in all tested species. As a consequence the proposed first male advantage in the dwarf honeybees is not supported by empirical data.Apis / honeybee / polyandry / patrilines / paternity skew

Heritabilities and genetic correlations for honey yield, gentleness, calmness and swarming behaviour in Austrian honey bees

“…In the breeding programme of Biene Österreich, there are on average ten drone-producing queens at the mating stations, and we assumed that queens are mated to 12 drones on average. These 12 drones is an effective number that leads to a similar average additive genetic relationship between workers as 17 drones (Laidlaw and Page 1984) with equal expected contributions to progeny (Schlüns et al 2005). Furthermore, the number of drones per drone-producing queen, and the number of offspring per drone, were taken to follow a Poisson distribution.…”

Sexual selection in Apis bees

“…As Schlüns et al (2005) show, patrilines are relatively evenly distributed in seven honeybee species investigated, at least for the most frequent patrilines, and no patriline is able to monopolize paternity in the ways expected from last or first male precedence. This finding is not necessarily expected, because males vary greatly in ejaculate size, (see Koeniger et al, 2005 and references therein): in Apis mellifera between 2 and 12 million and in Apis dorsata between 1.2 and 2.4 million.…”

“…This indicates that females do not simply copulate with a large number of males, but that sperm of most if not all of them actually gets stored and is successfully used for fertilization. Fourth, paternities are generally not highly biased towards one or very few males (Franck et al, 2002;Laidlaw and Page, 1984;Schlüns et al, 2004Schlüns et al, , 2005 as would be expected when sperm competition is a major force. Fifth, the evolution of "harmful" competitive traits such as sperm removal, spermicide, sperm flushing or sperm incapitation is not expected to evolve in Apis bees or any other social Hymenoptera with long-lived colonies.…”

Gene flow in admixed populations and implications for the conservation of the Western honeybee, Apis mellifera

“…Topographic structures like mountains and large water-bodies were proposed to inhibit flight paths of drones (Ruttner 1976;De la Rua et al 2002). Although there are various reports on mating flight frequencies, mating distances and mating success of drones and queens (Ruttner 1956(Ruttner , 1976Ruttner and Ruttner 1965, 1966, 1968, 1972Koeniger 1986;Berg et al 1997;Schlüns et al 2003Schlüns et al , 2004Schlüns et al , 2005aKoeniger et al 2005), detailed knowledge about mating distances is lacking. Because bee breeders use alpine mating apiaries that are isolated by up to 10 km from the surrounding population, our results suggest that either some proportion of drones or queens regularly extend their mating flights beyond this distance.…”