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Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect

Context-dependent decision-making conditions individual plasticity and is an integrant part of alternative reproductive strategies. In eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), the discovery of worker reproductive parasitism recently challenged the view of workers as a homogeneous collective enti...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yagound, Boris, Blacher, Pierre, Chameron, Stéphane, Châline, Nicolas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3522577/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251701
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052217
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author Yagound, Boris
Blacher, Pierre
Chameron, Stéphane
Châline, Nicolas
author_facet Yagound, Boris
Blacher, Pierre
Chameron, Stéphane
Châline, Nicolas
author_sort Yagound, Boris
collection PubMed
description Context-dependent decision-making conditions individual plasticity and is an integrant part of alternative reproductive strategies. In eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), the discovery of worker reproductive parasitism recently challenged the view of workers as a homogeneous collective entity and stressed the need to consider them as autonomous units capable of elaborate choices which influence their fitness returns. The reproductive decisions of individual workers thus need to be investigated and taken into account to understand the regulation of reproduction in insect societies. However, we know virtually nothing about the proximate mechanisms at the basis of worker reproductive decisions. Here, we test the hypothesis that the capacity of workers to reproduce in foreign colonies lies in their ability to react differently according to the colonial context and whether this reaction is influenced by a particular internal state. Using the bumble bee Bombus terrestris, we show that workers exhibit an extremely high reproductive plasticity which is conditioned by the social context they experience. Fertile workers reintroduced into their mother colony reverted to sterility, as expected. On the contrary, a high level of ovary activity persisted in fertile workers introduced into a foreign nest, and this despite more frequent direct contacts with the queen and the brood than control workers. Foreign workers' reproductive decisions were not affected by the resident queen, their level of fertility being similar whether or not the queen was removed from the host colony. Workers' physiological state at the time of introduction is also of crucial importance, since infertile workers failed to develop a reproductive phenotype in a foreign nest. Therefore, both internal and environmental factors appear to condition individual reproductive strategies in this species, suggesting that more complex decision-making mechanisms are involved in the regulation of worker reproduction than previously thought.
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spelling pubmed-35225772012-12-18 Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect Yagound, Boris Blacher, Pierre Chameron, Stéphane Châline, Nicolas PLoS One Research Article Context-dependent decision-making conditions individual plasticity and is an integrant part of alternative reproductive strategies. In eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), the discovery of worker reproductive parasitism recently challenged the view of workers as a homogeneous collective entity and stressed the need to consider them as autonomous units capable of elaborate choices which influence their fitness returns. The reproductive decisions of individual workers thus need to be investigated and taken into account to understand the regulation of reproduction in insect societies. However, we know virtually nothing about the proximate mechanisms at the basis of worker reproductive decisions. Here, we test the hypothesis that the capacity of workers to reproduce in foreign colonies lies in their ability to react differently according to the colonial context and whether this reaction is influenced by a particular internal state. Using the bumble bee Bombus terrestris, we show that workers exhibit an extremely high reproductive plasticity which is conditioned by the social context they experience. Fertile workers reintroduced into their mother colony reverted to sterility, as expected. On the contrary, a high level of ovary activity persisted in fertile workers introduced into a foreign nest, and this despite more frequent direct contacts with the queen and the brood than control workers. Foreign workers' reproductive decisions were not affected by the resident queen, their level of fertility being similar whether or not the queen was removed from the host colony. Workers' physiological state at the time of introduction is also of crucial importance, since infertile workers failed to develop a reproductive phenotype in a foreign nest. Therefore, both internal and environmental factors appear to condition individual reproductive strategies in this species, suggesting that more complex decision-making mechanisms are involved in the regulation of worker reproduction than previously thought. Public Library of Science 2012-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC3522577/ /pubmed/23251701 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052217 Text en © 2012 Yagound et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Yagound, Boris
Blacher, Pierre
Chameron, Stéphane
Châline, Nicolas
Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title_full Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title_fullStr Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title_full_unstemmed Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title_short Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect
title_sort social context and reproductive potential affect worker reproductive decisions in a eusocial insect
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3522577/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251701
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052217
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