self assessment in insects honeybee queens know their own strength自我评价在昆虫蜜蜂皇后知道自己的力量.pdfVIP

Self Assessment in Insects: Honeybee Queens Know Their Own Strength 1. 2. 3 3 4 1 5 Vincent Dietemann , Huo-Qing Zheng , Colleen Hepburn , H. Randall Hepburn , Shui-Hua Jin , Robin M. Crewe , Sarah E. Radloff , Fu-Liang Hu2*, Christian W. W. Pirk1 1 Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2 College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, 3 Department of Zoology and Entomology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, 4 Pinghu Breeding Apiary, Zhejiang, China, 5 Department of Statistics, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa Contests mediate access to reproductive opportunities in almost all species of animals. An important aspect of the evolution of contests is the reduction of the costs incurred during intra-specific encounters to a minimum. However, escalated fights are commonly lethal in some species like the honeybee, Apis mellifera . By experimentally reducing honeybee queens’ fighting abilities, we demonstrate that they refrain from engaging in lethal contests that typically characterize their reproductive dominance behavior and coexist peacefully within a colony. This suggests that weak queens exploit an alternative reproductive strategy and provides an explanation for rare occurrences of queen cohabitation in nature. Our results further indicate that self-assessment, but not mutual assessment of fighting ability occurs prior to and during the agonistic encounters. Citation: Dietemann V, Zheng H-Q, Hepburn C, Hepburn HR, Jin S-H, et al (2008) Self Assessment in Insects: Honeybee Queens Know Their Own Strength. PLoS ONE 3(1): e1412. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001412