Sperm use economy of honeybee (Apis mellifera) queens

The queens of eusocial ants, bees, and wasps only mate during a very brief period early in life to acquire and store a lifetime supply of sperm. As sperm cannot be replenished, queens have to be highly economic when using stored sperm to fertilize eggs, especially in species with large and long-lived colonies. However, queen fertility has not been studied in detail, so that we have little understanding of how economic sperm use is in different species, and whether queens are able to influence their sperm use. This is surprising given that sperm use is a key factor of eusocial life, as it determines the fecundity and longevity of queens and therefore colony fitness. We quantified the number of sperm that honeybee (Apis mellifera) queens use to fertilize eggs. We examined sperm use in naturally mated queens of different ages and in queens artificially inseminated with different volumes of semen. We found that queens are remarkably efficient and only use a median of 2 sperm per egg fertili...真社会性（eusocial）蚂蚁、蜜蜂和胡蜂的蚁后，仅会在生命早期极短的窗口期内完成交配，以获取并储存可供终身使用的精子。由于精子无法补充，蚁后在使用储存的精子授精时必须极度节约，尤其对于拥有大型且长寿社群的物种而言。然而，目前针对蚁后生育能力的研究尚不够深入，因此我们对不同物种中精子的节约使用程度，以及蚁后是否能够调控自身的精子使用模式，都知之甚少。考虑到精子使用模式是真社会性生活的关键影响因素——其决定了蚁后的繁殖力与寿命，进而影响社群适合度，这种认知空白显得尤为反常。本研究对西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）蚁后授精卵子所消耗的精子数量进行了定量分析。我们分别研究了不同日龄自然交配蚁后，以及接受不同剂量精液人工授精的蚁后的精子使用情况。研究发现蚁后在精子使用上效率极高，每枚受精卵子仅消耗中位数为2的精子……