Biology
A parent-of-origin effect on honeybee worker ovary size
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Apis mellifera capensis is unique among honeybees in that unmated workers can produce pseudo-clonal female offspring via thelytokous parthenogenesis. Workers use this ability to compete among themselves and with their queen to be the mother of new queens. Males could therefore enhance their reproductive success by imprinting genes that enhance fertility in their daughter workers. This possibility sets the scene for intragenomic conflict between queens and drones over worker reproductive traits. Here, we show a strong parent-of-origin effect for ovary size (number of ovarioles) in reciprocal crosses between two honeybee subspecies, A. m. capensis and Apis mellifera scutellata. In this cross, workers with an A. m. capensis father had 30% more ovarioles than genotypically matched workers with an A. m. scutellata father. Other traits we measured (worker weight at emergence and the presence/absence of a spermatheca) are influenced more by rearing conditions than by parent-of-origin effects. Our study is the first to show a strong epigenetic (or, less likely, cytoplasmic maternal) effect for a reproductive trait in the honeybee and suggests that a search for parent-of-origin effects in other social insects may be fruitful. © 2013 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
Publication Title
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publication Date
11-27-2013
Volume
281
Issue
1775
ISSN
0962-8452
DOI
10.1098/rspb.2013.2388
Keywords
Apis mellifera capensis, imprinting, interspecific crosses, intragenomic conflict, parent-of-origin effects, reciprocal effects
Repository Citation
Oldroyd, Benjamin P.; Allsopp, Michael H.; Roth, Katherine M.; Remnant, Emily J.; Drewell, Robert A.; and Beekman, Madeleine, "A parent-of-origin effect on honeybee worker ovary size" (2013). Biology. 136.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_biology/136
