Abstract
Many animals have individual and social mechanisms for combating pathogens. Animals may exhibit short-term physiological tradeoffs between social and individual immunity because the latter is often energetically costly. Genetic tradeoffs between these two traits can also occur if mutations that enhance social immunity diminish individual immunity, or vice versa. Physiological tradeoffs between individual and social immunity have been previously documented in insects, but there has been no study of genetic tradeoffs involving these traits. There is strong evidence that some genes influence both innate immunity and behaviour in social insects – a prerequisite for genetic tradeoffs. Quantifying genetic tradeoffs is critical for understanding the evolution of immunity in social insects and for devising effective strategies for breeding disease-resistant pollinator populations. We conducted two experiments to test the hypothesis of a genetic tradeoff between social and individual immunity in the honey bee, Apis mellifera. First, we estimated the relative contribution of genetics to individual variation in innate immunity of honey bee workers, as only heritable traits can experience genetic tradeoffs. Second, we examined if worker bees with hygienic sisters have reduced individual innate immune response. We genotyped several hundred workers from two colonies and found that patriline genotype does not significantly influence the antimicrobial activity of a worker’s hemolymph. Further, we did not find a negative correlation between hygienic behaviour and the average antimicrobial activity of a worker’s hemolymph across 30 honey bee colonies. Taken together, our work indicates no genetic tradeoffs between hygienic behaviour and innate immunity in honey bees. Our work suggests that using artificial selection to increase hygienic behaviour of honey bee colonies is not expected to concurrently compromise individual innate immunity of worker bees.
Highlights
Organisms can individually fight pathogens by mounting an immune response that results in the synthesis and release of antipathogenic molecules that kill or inhibit the growth of pathogens
We found no significant effect of patriline identity on the antimicrobial activity of a worker’s hemolymph in colony c10 (F = 1.28, df = 16, p = 0.22; Figure 1B) and c2 (F = 0.73, df = 19, p = 0.78; Figure 1C)
Our study provides two lines of evidence against genetic tradeoffs between social and innate immunity in the honey bee
Summary
Organisms can individually fight pathogens by mounting an immune response that results in the synthesis and release of antipathogenic molecules that kill or inhibit the growth of pathogens. Mounting an individual innate immune response is energetically costly, and this cost is hypothesized to result in tradeoffs between innate immunity and other traits important to survival and reproduction over short (i.e. physiological) and long (i.e. evolutionary) timescales [4]. Physiological tradeoffs between innate and social immunity have been discovered in the sub-social burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, who rear their brood on carrion. In this species, adults synthesize antimicrobial enzymes that can be used for personal immunity or for ‘sanitizing’ the carcass used for brood rearing (i.e. social immunity). This shortterm tradeoff between innate immunity and learning may impede social immunity if bees have to learn odor cues of sick sisters for example
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