Abstract
Queen pheromones have long been studied as a major factor regulating reproductive division of labor in social insects. Hitherto, only a handful of queen pheromones were identified and their effects on workers have mostly been studied in isolation from the social context in which they operate. Our study examined the importance of behavioral and social context for the perception of queen semiochemicals by bumble bee workers. Our results indicate that a mature queen’s cuticular semiochemicals are capable of inhibiting worker reproduction only when accompanied by the queen’s visual presence and the offspring she produces, thus, when presented in realistic context. Queen’s chemistry, queen’s visual presence and presence of offspring all act to regulate worker reproduction, but none of these elements produces an inhibitory effect on its own. Our findings highlight the necessity to reconsider what constitutes a queen pheromone and suggest a new approach to the study of chemical ecology in social insects.
Highlights
Queen pheromones have long been studied as a major factor regulating reproductive division of labor in social insects
In this study we examined the importance of context in the perception of pheromones
Of the queen’s physical and visual presence and only between virgin to young and old queens, but not between young and old queens. Such context-dependent response to queen semiochemicals has not been previously reported in social insects but an effect of social context on the production and the preception of pheromones has been documented in D rosophila[26,27] as well as in mammalian models[28,29,30,31]
Summary
Queen pheromones have long been studied as a major factor regulating reproductive division of labor in social insects. Pheromones have been studied for decades in insects and other organisms[1], and throughout the course of these studies were defined as chemical stimuli evoking a stereotypical response in members of the same species. This line of thought, has largely overlooked the fact that an organism, in addition to the studied stimulus, will inevitably perceive, and respond to a myriad of other stimuli and influences found in its environment, that can collectively be termed context. Even in the seminal article stating the effects of the honey bee queen mandibular pheromone (QMP)[17], QMP affected worker reproduction to a lesser extent than the complete colony environment with a live queen
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