Data from: Subfamily-dependent alternative reproductive strategies in worker honey bees

Functional worker sterility is the defining feature of insect societies. Yet, workers are sometimes found reproducing in their own or foreign colonies. The proximate mechanisms underlying these alternative reproductive phenotypes are key to understanding how reproductive altruism and selfishness are balanced in eusocial insects. In this study we show that in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies the social environment of a worker, i.e. the presence and relatedness of the queens in a worker’s natal colony and in surrounding colonies, significantly influences her fertility and drifting behaviour. Furthermore, subfamilies vary in the frequency of worker ovarian activation, propensity to drift, and the kind of host colony that is targeted for reproductive parasitism. Our results show that there is an interplay between a worker’s subfamily, reproductive state and social environment that substantially affects her reproductive phenotype. Our study further indicate that honey bee populations show substantial genetic variance for worker reproductive strategies, suggesting that no one strategy is optimal under all the circumstances that a typical worker may encounter.

工蜂功能性不育（functional worker sterility）是昆虫社会的标志性特征。然而，人们偶尔会在工蜂的自身巢群或外来巢群中观察到其进行繁殖。解析这类另类生殖表型（reproductive phenotypes）背后的近因机制（proximate mechanisms），是理解真社会性昆虫（eusocial insects）如何平衡生殖利他主义与自私行为的关键所在。本研究表明，在西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）的巢群中，工蜂所处的社会环境——即其出生巢群及周边巢群内蜂王的存在情况与亲缘关系——会显著影响其生育能力与工蜂漂移行为（drifting behaviour）。此外，不同亚家系的工蜂在卵巢激活频率、漂移倾向以及生殖寄生（reproductive parasitism）所靶向的宿主巢群类型上均存在显著差异。本研究结果显示，工蜂的亚家系背景、生殖状态与社会环境三者间存在交互作用，这会极大地塑造其生殖表型。本研究进一步证实，西方蜜蜂种群在工蜂生殖策略上存在显著的遗传变异（genetic variance），这意味着不存在一种能在工蜂可能遭遇的所有情境下均适用的最优策略。