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Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees
Although the honeybee is a crucial agricultural agent and a prominent scientific model organism, crucial aspects of its reproductive behaviour are still unknown. During the mating season, honeybee males, the drones, gather in congregations 10–40 m above ground. Converging evidence suggests that dron...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5524964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28740234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06241-9 |
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author | Bastin, Florian Cholé, Hanna Lafon, Grégory Sandoz, Jean-Christophe |
author_facet | Bastin, Florian Cholé, Hanna Lafon, Grégory Sandoz, Jean-Christophe |
author_sort | Bastin, Florian |
collection | PubMed |
description | Although the honeybee is a crucial agricultural agent and a prominent scientific model organism, crucial aspects of its reproductive behaviour are still unknown. During the mating season, honeybee males, the drones, gather in congregations 10–40 m above ground. Converging evidence suggests that drones emit a pheromone that can attract other drones, thereby increasing the size of the congregation. Virgin queens join the vicinity of the congregation after it has formed, and mate with as many as 20 males in mid-air. It is still unclear which sensory cues help virgin queens find drone congregations in the first place. Beside visual cues for long-range orientation, queens may use olfactory cues. We thus tested virgin queens’ olfactory orientation on a walking simulator in which they have full control over odour stimulation. We show that sexually-mature virgin queens are attracted to the odour bouquet from a group of living drones. They are not attracted to the bouquet from a group of workers. In addition, non-sexually receptive females (workers) of the same age are not attracted to the drone odour bouquet. Interpreted in the context of mating, these results may suggest that virgin queens use volatile olfactory cues from the drones to find the congregations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5524964 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55249642017-07-26 Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees Bastin, Florian Cholé, Hanna Lafon, Grégory Sandoz, Jean-Christophe Sci Rep Article Although the honeybee is a crucial agricultural agent and a prominent scientific model organism, crucial aspects of its reproductive behaviour are still unknown. During the mating season, honeybee males, the drones, gather in congregations 10–40 m above ground. Converging evidence suggests that drones emit a pheromone that can attract other drones, thereby increasing the size of the congregation. Virgin queens join the vicinity of the congregation after it has formed, and mate with as many as 20 males in mid-air. It is still unclear which sensory cues help virgin queens find drone congregations in the first place. Beside visual cues for long-range orientation, queens may use olfactory cues. We thus tested virgin queens’ olfactory orientation on a walking simulator in which they have full control over odour stimulation. We show that sexually-mature virgin queens are attracted to the odour bouquet from a group of living drones. They are not attracted to the bouquet from a group of workers. In addition, non-sexually receptive females (workers) of the same age are not attracted to the drone odour bouquet. Interpreted in the context of mating, these results may suggest that virgin queens use volatile olfactory cues from the drones to find the congregations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-07-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5524964/ /pubmed/28740234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06241-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Bastin, Florian Cholé, Hanna Lafon, Grégory Sandoz, Jean-Christophe Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title | Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title_full | Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title_fullStr | Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title_full_unstemmed | Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title_short | Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
title_sort | virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5524964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28740234 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06241-9 |
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