Promiscuous honeybee queens generate colonies with a critical minority of waggle-dancing foragers |
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Authors: | Heather R Mattila Thomas D Seeley |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA;(2) Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA |
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Abstract: | Honeybees present a paradox that is unusual among the social Hymenoptera: extremely promiscuous queens generate colonies of
nonreproducing workers who cooperate to rear reproductives with whom they share limited kinship. Extreme polyandry, which
lowers relatedness but creates within-colony genetic diversity, produces substantial fitness benefits for honeybee queens
and their colonies because of increased disease resistance and workforce productivity. However, the way that these increases
are generated by individuals in genetically diverse colonies remains a mystery. We assayed the foraging and dancing performances
of workers in multiple-patriline and single-patriline colonies to discover how within-colony genetic diversity, conferred
to colonies by polyandrous queens, gives rise to a more productive foraging effort. We also determined whether the initiation
by foragers of waggle-dance signaling in response to an increasing sucrose stimulus (their dance response thresholds) was
linked to patriline membership. Per capita, foragers in multiple-patriline colonies visited a food source more often and advertised
it with more waggle-dance signals than foragers from single-patriline colonies, although there was variability among multiple-patriline
colonies in the strength of this difference. High-participation patrilines emerged within multiple-patriline colonies, but
their more numerous foragers and dancers were neither more active per capita nor lower-threshold dancers than their counterparts
from low-participation patrilines. Our results demonstrate that extreme polyandry does not enhance recruitment effort through
the introduction of low-dance-threshold, high-activity workers into a colony’s population. Rather, genetic diversity is critical
for injecting into a colony’s workforce social facilitators who are more likely to become engaged in foraging-related activities,
so boosting the production of dance signals and a colony’s responsiveness to profitable food sources. |
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