title: How flies respond to honey bee pheromone: the role of the foraging gene on reproductive response to queen mandibular pheromone.
abstract: In this study we test one central prediction from sociogenomic theory--that social and non-social taxa share common genetic toolkits that regulate reproduction in response to environmental cues. We exposed Drosophila females of rover (for(R)) and sitter (for(s)) genotypes to an ovary-suppressing pheromone derived from the honeybee Apis mellifera. Surprisingly, queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) affected several measures of fitness in flies, and in a manner comparable to the pheromone's normal effect on bee workers. QMP-treated sitter flies had smaller ovaries that contained fewer eggs than did untreated controls. QMP-treated rover flies, by contrast, showed a more variable pattern that only sometimes resulted in ovary inhibition, while a third strain of fly that contains a sitter mutant allele in a rover background (for(s2)) showed no ovarian response to QMP. Taken together, our results suggest that distinctly non-social insects have some capacity to respond to social cues, but that this response varies with fly genotype. In general, the interspecific response is consistent with a conserved gene set affecting reproductive physiology. The differential response among strains in particular suggests that for is itself important for modulating the fly's pheromonal response.
authors: Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada, acamilet@uwo.ca.
authors: Alison L
authors: AL
authors: Camiletti
authors: David N
authors: DN
authors: Awde
authors: Graham J
authors: GJ
authors: Thompson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000737:chemistry*; D004330:Drosophila / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D009154:Mutation; D010053:Ovary / Q000187:drug effects; D010675:Pheromones / Q000494:pharmacology*; D012098:Reproduction / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D010675:Pheromones