Spermatozoa capacitation in female Varroa destructor and its influence on the timing and success of female reproduction

Abstract

Mating of Varroa destructor takes place inside the sealed honey bee brood cell. During copulation, male mites transfer the spermatozoa into the genital openings of the females. Before the fertilization of female germ cells, the transferred spermatozoa have to pass through a final maturation process inside the genital tract of the female, the so-called capacitation. We here describe for the first time the morphological changes and chronological sequence of spermatozoa capacitation within female V. destructor. We have defined seven distinct stages of spermatozoa during the process of capacitation and have shown that it takes about 5days from mating to the occurrence of spermatozoa ready for fertilization. This might explain the results of an additional experiment where we could show that freshly mated daughter mites need a phoretic phase on bees before their first reproduction cycle. The transfer of non-capacitated spermatozoa from male V. destructor and the resulting long capacitation period within the female mites seems to be a consequence of an adaptive pressure for the male mites to inseminate several daughter mites within the short time span inside the sealed honey bee brood cell.