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Experimental variation in polyandry affects parasite loads and fitness in a bumble-bee

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Abstract

In many species of animals, females typically mate with more than one male (polyandry). Some social insects carry this behaviour to extremes1. For example, honeybee queens mate with ten to twenty (or even more) males on their nuptial flights2. The reasons for this behaviour remain unknown, given the obvious costs of time, energy and exposure to predation. Several potential benefits of polyandry have been proposed1,3,3,4, but none are well supported yet. Here we test the hypothesis that genetic diversity among a female's offspring may offer some protection from parasitism5,6,7. We artificially inseminated queens of a bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris L.) with sperm of either low or high genetic diversity. The resulting colonies were exposed to parasitism under field conditions. High-diversity colonies had fewer parasites and showed greater reproductive success, on average, than did low-diversity colonies. We suggest that female mating frequency may be influenced in part by parasites.

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Figure 1: Intensity and prevalence of infection of high- and low-diversity B. terrestris colonies.
Figure 2: Average parasite load (the average number of different parasite species per worker per colony) was lower in workers from high-diversity colonies than in workers from low-diversity colonies (U-test: z = 2.162, P = 0.015).
Figure 3: Average reproductive success was higher in high-diversity colonies than in low-diversity colonies, as assessed by several criteria: first, the males produced (t = 2.05, d.f. = 17, P = 0.028); second, the number of queens produced (U-test, z = 0.518, not significant); and third, sexual productivity (that is, the number of queens multiplied by two, plus the number of males; justified because the body mass of queens is approximately double that of males: t = 2.67, d.f. = 17, P = 0.008).

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Boomsma, M. Brown, F. Fischer, B. Imhoof, S. Koulianos, N. Krüger, E.Magro, E. Meier, R. E. Page Jr, F. Ratnieks, R. Schmid-Hempel and H. Schwarz for help and comments, and the local communities and forestry commissions for use of their land. This work was supported bygrants to P.S.-H. from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Office of Science and Technology (within a European TMR network).

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  1. ETH Zürich, Experimental Ecology, ETH-Zentrum NW, CH-8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Boris Baer & Paul Schmid-Hempel

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  1. Boris Baer
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Correspondence to Paul Schmid-Hempel.

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Baer, B., Schmid-Hempel, P. Experimental variation in polyandry affects parasite loads and fitness in a bumble-bee. Nature 397, 151–154 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16451

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