Polyandrous bee provides extended offspring care biparentally as an alternative to monandry based eusociality

0505411 - BC 2020 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Mikát, M. - Janošík, L. - Černá, K. - Matoušková, E. - Hadrava, Jiří - Bureš, V. - Straka, J.
Polyandrous bee provides extended offspring care biparentally as an alternative to monandry based eusociality.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Roč. 116, č. 13 (2019), s. 6238-6243. ISSN 0027-8424. E-ISSN 1091-6490
Institutional support: RVO:60077344
Keywords : biparental care * social behaviour * paternity
OECD category: Entomology
Impact factor: 9.412, year: 2019
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/13/6238.full.pdf

Parental care behavior evolves to increase the survival of offspring. When offspring care becomes complicated for ecological reasons, cooperation of multiple individuals can be beneficial. There are two types of cooperative care: biparental care and worker (helper)-based care (e.g., eusociality). Although biparental care is common in several groups of vertebrates, it is generally rare in arthropods. Conversely, eusociality is widespread in insects, especially the aculeate Hymenoptera. Here, we present a case of biparental care in bees, in Ceratina nigrolabiata (Apidae, Xylocopinae). Similar to eusocial behavior, biparental care leads to greater brood protection in this species. Male guarding increases provisioning of nests because females are liberated from the tradeoff between provisioning and nest protection. The main benefit of parental care for males should be increased paternity. Interestingly though, we found that paternity of offspring by guard males is extraordinarily low (10% of offspring). Generally, we found that nests were not guarded by the same male for the whole provisioning season, meaning that males arrive to nests as stepfathers. However, we show that long-term guarding performed by a single male does increase paternity. We suggest that the multiple-mating strategy of these bees increased the amount of time for interactions between the sexes, and this longer period of potential interaction supported the origin of biparental care. Eusociality based on monandry was thought to be the main type of extended brood protection in bees. We show that biparental care based on polyandry provides an interesting evolutionary alternative.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0297139