On Intraoviductal Sperm Competition in the Honeybee (Apis mellifera)

• Authors: M. Woyciechowski , E. Krol
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The authors investigated whether there is sperm competition in the honeybee queen's oviducts. 78 full-sister queens were artificially inseminated with equal volumes (0.75 mm3) of sperm. Each queen in the first group was inseminated with the sperm of one drone, in the second group with that of 6 brother drones, and in the third group with that of 6 unrelated drones. After 48 h the spermatozoa in the dissected spermathecae of the queens were counted. The three queen groups did not differ in the number of spermatozoa stored in their spermathecae. Although these results do not confirm a sperm-incapacitation process in the queen's oviducts, the mating behaviour of the genus <MI>Apis<D> as a whole argues for further investigation of the hypothesis.

Keywords

EN

APIS MELLIFERA; HONEY BEE; MATING BEHAVIOUR; SPERM COMPETITION

Discipline

• EXPERIMENTAL_BIOLOGY_&_MEDICINE: EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY & MEDICINE

• Publisher: Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Folia Biologica
• Year: 1996
• Volume: 44
• Pages: 51-53

Contributors

author

M. Woyciechowski

author

E. Krol

• Document Type: article
• Publication order reference: M.Woyciechowski, Bee Research Department, Agricultural University, Al. 29 Listopada 52, 31-425 Krakow, Poland.