![]() Second, the comparison of sperm counts in a drone’s seminal vesicles (Schlüns et al. The seminal vesicles are enlarged receptacles in the vasa deferentia of the drone reproductive tract. First, all sperm are produced during a relatively short temporal window during preimaginal development, as by the end of the pharate-adult phase, practically all spermatozoa are formed and ready to migrate from the testes to the seminal vesicles during the first days after adult emergence (Bishop 1920 Louveaux 1977 Koeniger et al. We furthermore considered that there should be strong selection pressure on sperm production in honey bee drones. The hypothesis was based on the gonadal architecture shared between queens and drones, and on the fact that in insects in general, mechanisms underlying gonad development are shared between the sexes (Büning 1994 Green II and Extavour 2012). 2018), we put forward the hypothesis on a male-driven origin of the exaggerated gonad morphologies in the two sexes. In a previous review on the ovary dimorphism in the female castes of the honey bee (Hartfelder et al. mellifera drones are capable of producing roughly 10 times more sperm than the males of stingless bees, and 100 times more than bumble bee males (Garófalo 1980). Also, due to the high number of testiolar tubules, A. With regard to these reproductive traits, the genus Apis as a whole, stands in contrast to all the other bees, even to the equally highly eusocial stingless bees, Meliponini, which, with few exceptions, are monandrous (Vollet-Neto et al. ![]() In this respect, they differ from the males of all other bee species, which generally have only four testiolar tubules per testis (Ferreira et al. Furthermore, just like the queen’s ovaries, the drone’s testes are composed of a large number of serial units-150 and more testiolar tubules per testis (Zander 1916 Hoage and Kessel 1968). Thus, honey bee queens are highly polyandrous, with mean mating frequencies ranging between 15 and 25 (Adams et al. The reproductive biology in the genus Apis is replete of peculiarities: a virgin queen mates sequentially with multiple drones high up in the air, the drones die during copulation, the mating sign of the previous drone is immediately removed by the next copulating drone, and each drone can inject over a million spermatozoa into a queen’s reproductive tract (Koeniger et al. 2014a) and bee breeding strategies by natural or instrumental insemination (Koeniger et al. Hence, drones clearly deserve a closer look, due to their importance in honey bee mating biology (see recent review by Koeniger et al. Yet, males are also considered the neglected gender (Koeniger 2005), not only in honey bees but also in social Hymenoptera in general. 2004), indicating strong selection on male sexual traits (Boomsma et al. Honey bees, leaf cutter and army ants, and wasps of the genus Vespula stand out among all the social Hymenoptera in terms of their extraordinarily high-effective queen mating frequencies and quantities of sperm produced by the males (Boomsma and Ratnieks 1996 Kronauer et al.
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