Linked Life Data

19778383

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/19778383

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
19
pubmed:dateCreated
2009-9-25
pubmed:abstractText
Insect colonies have been traditionally regarded as closed societies comprised of completely sterile workers ruled over by a single once-mated queen. However, over the past 15 years, microsatellite studies of parentage have revealed that this perception is far from the truth (Beekman & Oldroyd 2008). First, we learned that honey bee queens are far more promiscuous than we had previously imagined (Estoup et al. 1994), with one Apis dorsata queen clocked at over 100 mates (Wattanachaiyingcharoen et al. 2003). Then Oldroyd et al. (1994) reported a honey bee colony from Queensland, where virtually all the males were sons of a single patriline of workers - a clear case of a cheater mutant that promoted intra-colonial reproductive parasitism. Then we learned that both bumble bee colonies (Lopez-Vaamonde et al. 2004) and queenless honey bee colonies (Nanork et al. 2005, 2007) are routinely parasitized by workers from other nests that fly in and lay male-producing eggs that are then reared by the victim colony. There is even evidence that in a thelytokous honey bee population, workers lay female-destined eggs directly into queen cells, thus reincarnating themselves as a queen (Jordan et al. 2008). And let us not forget ants, where microsatellite studies have revealed equally bizarre and totally unexpected phenomena (e.g. Cahan & Keller 2003; Pearcy et al. 2004; Fournier et al. 2005). Now, in this issue, Alves et al. (2009) use microsatellites to provide yet another shocking and completely unexpected revelation about the nefarious goings-on in insect colonies: intergenerational reproductive parasitism by stingless bee workers.
pubmed:commentsCorrections
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Oct
pubmed:issn
1365-294X
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Electronic
pubmed:volume
18
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
3958-60
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2009
pubmed:articleTitle
Intergenerational reproductive parasitism in a stingless bee.
pubmed:affiliation
Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Laboratory, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. boldroyd@bio.usyd.edu.au
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Comment