Abstract

Cohesion in social insect colonies is maintained by use of chemical signals produced by the queen, workers, and brood. In honey bees in particular, signals from the queen and brood are crucial for the regulation of reproductive division of labor, ensuring that the only reproductive female individual in the colony is the queen, whereas the workers remain reproductively sterile. However, even given this strict level of control, workers can, in principle, activate their ovaries and lay eggs. Although much is known about the behavioral and physiological traits that accompany the switch from worker sterility to being reproductively active, much less is known regarding the molecular changes that accompany this switch. This review will explore what is known about the genes and molecular pathways involved in the making of laying workers/false queens in the Cape honey bee, Apis mellifera capensis Eschscholtz, through an analysis of the basis for thelytoky in this subspecies, the exocrine glandular chemistry of reproductively dominant workers and what is known about the biosynthesis of their pheromone components. This review will contribute to our understanding of the genetic regulation of thelytoky and the molecular mechanisms that govern reproductive division of labor in honey bees and provide generalizations that may be applicable to other social hymenoptera using this evolutionary fascinating example of worker reproduction.

中文翻译：

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开普蜜蜂，蜜蜂（Apis mellifera capensis）（膜翅目：Apidae）的生物学：Thetotoky及其对社会寄生虫和工人繁殖的影响的综述。

抽象的

通过使用女王，工人和育雏所产生的化学信号来维持社会昆虫群落的凝聚力。特别是在蜜蜂中，皇后和后代的信号对于调节生殖分工至关重要，确保蜂群中唯一的繁殖雌性个体是皇后，而工人则保持生殖不育。但是，即使在这种严格的控制水平下，工人原则上也可以激活卵巢并产卵。尽管人们对从工人不育状态向生殖活动状态转变的行为和生理特征了解很多，但对伴随这种转变的分子变化的了解却很少。通过分析该亚种的溶菌基础，生殖优势劳动者的外分泌腺化学以及有关其信息素成分的生物合成的知识，对蜜蜂进行了分析。这篇综述将有助于我们了解蜜蜂的解毒力的遗传调控和分子机制，这些分子机制将控制蜜蜂的生殖分工，并利用这种引人入胜的进化过程中的工人繁殖实例，提供适用于其他社会膜翅目的概括。