Honeybee workers use cues other than egg viability for policing.
Worker policing, wherein social insect workers prevent their sisters from reproducing by eating worker-laid eggs, is recognized as a textbook example of kin selection in action. However, the evolutionary basis of policing was recently challenged in a study that suggested that police-workers remove worker-laid eggs not because rearing workers' sons reduces worker fitness, but merely because worker-laid eggs have low viability. Here, we refute Pirk et al.'s conclusions. First, we confirm earlier work that showed equal viability of eggs laid by queens and workers. Second, a statistical analysis of the data of Pirk et al. reveals that their own data do not support the conclusion that worker-laid eggs are policed merely because of their low viability. Third, we present data that unequivocally show that police-workers cannot discriminate between dead and live eggs. Hence, our study seriously weakens the challenge to the kin-selected basis of policing in honeybees.
Beekman
Madeleine
M
School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia. mbeekman@bio.usyd.edu.au
Oldroyd
Benjamin P
BP
D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D052287:Oviparity / Q000502:physiology; D010063:Ovum / Q000502:physiology*; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D012919:Social Behavior