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430 results for “Queens”
Ontogeny of superorganisms: Social control of queen specialization in ants
<p>The functioning of biological systems relies on the cooperation of specialized components and understanding the processes that produce such specialization is a major challenge in biology. Here we study the ontogeny of biological systems at a new phenotypic level: the superorganisms (i.e., insect societies with specialized individuals). We investigate how founding queens, the earliest developmental stage of ant colonies, transition from expressing behavioral pluripotency to becoming strictly specialized in egg production. We demonstrate that the presence of workers both initiates and maintains this queen specialization and propose that such a social control of queen behavior is common in ants and regulated by ancestral mechanisms. These findings contradict the traditional view of social insect queens as being intrinsically specialized in egg production and may reshape our understanding of division of labor in insect societies. </p>
Unveiling the submerged secrets: bumblebee queens' resilience to flooding
<p>In a previous study, an experimental oversight led to the accumulation of water filling a container housing diapausing bumblebee queens. Surprisingly, after draining the water, the queens were found to be alive. This observation raises a compelling question: can bumblebee queens endure periods of inundation while overwintering underground? To address this question, we conducted an experiment using 143 common eastern bumblebee (<em>Bombus impatiens</em>) queens placed in soil-filled tubes and subjected to artificially induced diapause in a refrigerated unit for seven days. Tap water was then added to the tubes and queens (n=21/treatment) were either maintained underwater using a plunger-like apparatus or left to float naturally on the water's surface for varying durations (8h, 24h, or 7 days) while remaining in overwintering conditions. Seventeen queens served as controls. After the submersion period, queens were removed from the water, transferred to new tubes with soil, and kept in cold storage for 8 weeks. Overall queen survival remained consistently high (89.5 ± 6.4%) across all treatments and did not differ among submersion regimes and durations. These results demonstrate the remarkable ability of diapausing <em>B. impatiens</em> queens to withstand submersion underwater for up to one week, indicating their adaptations to survive periods of flooding in the wild.</p>
Different strategies between queens and workers against fungal pathogens in the termite Reticulitermes chinensis
<p>Social insects are prone to pathogen infection because of high exposure rates from social interactions. However, it remains unclear whether queens have enhanced pathogen resistance, since reproduction is largely confined to queens. Here, we used a natural host-pathogen system, the subterranean termite <em>Reticulitermes chinensis </em>and<em> </em>the entomopathogenic fungus <em>Metarhizium anisopliae,</em><em> </em>to investigate the differences in allo-grooming, locomotion, and immune gene expression between queens and workers against pathogen infection. We found that fungal infection significantly reduced survival in both queens and workers. Infected queens received significantly more grooming time from sanitary nestmates than infected workers, but they returned much less grooming time to sanitary nestmates than infected workers. Infection resulted in a reduction in the average locomotion speed and distance of queens but had no effect on worker locomotion. Infection resulted in upregulated expression of two immune genes (<em>termicin</em> and <em>transferrin</em>), two antioxidant genes (<em>CAT</em> and <em>SOD</em>), and phosphate genes <em>CYP450</em> in queens but not in workers. Our results indicated that eusocial termites evolved strategies that prioritize the reproductive castes welfare in defending against the pathogen infection to ensure continued reproduction and colony persistence.</p>
Queen scallop (<i>Aequipecten opercularis</i>) growth monitoring - SAMS IMTA Lab
<p>Queen scallop (Aequipecten opercularis) spat naturally settled on shellfish grow-out strutcures deployed at SAMS IMTA Lab; in particular within nestier trays holding King scallops. Spat was translocated into separate nestier trays deployed beneath King scallop trays in August 2023. Every 3-4 months, scaled photographs were recorded of the on-growing Queen scallops, with images being uploaded to ImageJ for measurement of individual's shell height and their growth over time (Aug 2023 - July 2024).</p>
Queen execution in a monogynous ant
<p>Workers in many species of social insects are capable of laying unfertilized eggs, which can develop into haploid males. This causes a conflict about male parentage between queens and workers. In a few species, this may result in matricide, i.e., workers kill the colony's queen. Queen killing has so far been observed mainly in multi-queen colonies or in annual species, when the queen's fecundity declines at the end of the reproductive period. Here, we report queen expulsion and matricide in a monogynous, monandrous ant with perennial societies. Workers were seen to aggressively expel both related and unrelated queens from their nest shortly after the end of hibernation. Queen expulsion and matricide led to a significant decrease in the number of workers and brood, but eventually increased the direct fitness of workers through significant male production. Long-term observations revealed a short lifespan of queens, while workers in orphaned colonies survived and produced male offspring over several years.</p>
Dataset for Identification of giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia, queen sex pheromone components
<p>The Vespidae are a diverse family of wasps and hornets that contain invasive species and are formidable predators of insects, including social bees. Recently, the world’s largest hornet, <em>Vespa mandarinia</em> Smith(Hymenoptera: Vespidae), which occurs naturally in the Indomalayan region, has been found in Canada and United States. Some simulations indicate it could rapidly spread throughout Washington, Oregon, and parts of the eastern USA, threaten native bees and honey bees, and harm bee-pollinated crop production worth nearly $12 million annually. There is consequently an urgent need to learn more about <em>V. mandarinia</em>’s reproductive biology and to develop trapping methods to locate its nests and control its reproduction. We identified <em>V. mandarinia</em> queen-produced sex pheromone from the 5<sup>th</sup> and 6<sup>th</sup> intersegmental sternal glands of virgin queens. The major active compounds were hexanoic acid (HA), octanoic acid (OA) and decanoic acid (DA). When placed in field traps, the synthetic compounds and a queen-equivalent mixture rapidly attracted hundreds of males. This dataset provides the data used in this paper.</p>
Figs 1–5 in Dealate queens of the ant genus Eurhopalothrix Brown et Kempf, 1961 (Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae) from Sumatra
Figs 1–5. Dealate gyne of Eurhopalothrix platisquama (colony: RS6ii2021-SU5,
Peter Ganine Classic Queen
Peter Ganine Classic Queen One of the most famous and iconic props from Star Trek is the three dimensional chess set, and the most generally associated were the Ganine "Classic Style" chess pieces. Peter Ganine (October 11, 1900 – August 11, 1974) was a Russian-American sculptor best known for his work in ceramics and his chess sets. When Ganine gave human faces to chess pieces, he introduced "first major change of design for chess sets in more than a century. Source: Objaverse 1.0 / Sketchfab
Drinking Fountain Queen Square Gardens
A drinking fountain in Queen Square Gardens, London. Date: 1964? http://www.mdfcta.co.uk/details-f/f138.html Photos taken in February 2019 with a Sony a6000 and processed in Agisoft Metashape. Source: Objaverse 1.0 / Sketchfab
Queen Caroline Amalie
Queen Caroline Amalie (1827), Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770 - 1844), Plaster, height: 175 cm, Inventory number: A164. Thorvaldsen museum (Copenhagen, Denmark). Made with Memento Beta (now ReMake) from AutoDesk. For more updates, please follow @GeoffreyMarchal on Twitter. Source: Objaverse 1.0 / Sketchfab
Queen Elizabeth I Oak
A fallen oak tree, seeded in 12th Century and located at the centre of Greenwich Park. "Henry VIII is said to have danced around the tree with Anne Boleyn.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth%27s_Oak,_Greenwich_Park 179 photos taken (with difficulty over fence and through foliage) in November 2020 with a Sony a6000 and processed in reality Capture. Source: Objaverse 1.0 / Sketchfab
Bust of Queen Nefertiti
Bust of Queen Nefertiti Optimized using PIXYZ 3D-Model by Trigon Art, Berlin 2008 | Structured-light 3D scan, 2008. licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Source: Objaverse 1.0 / Sketchfab
Data from: Experimental increase in fecundity causes upregulation of fecundity and body maintenance genes in the fat body of ant queens
<p>In most organisms, fecundity and longevity are negatively associated and the molecular regulation of these two life history traits is highly interconnected. In addition, nutrient intake often has opposing effects on lifespan and reproduction. In contrast to solitary insects, the main reproductive individual of social hymenopterans, the queen, is also the most long-lived. During development, queen larvae are well-nourished, but we are only beginning to understand the impact of nutrition on the queens' adult life and the molecular regulation and connectivity of fecundity and longevity. Here, we used two experimental manipulations to alter queen fecundity in the ant <em>Temnothorax rugatulus</em> and investigated associated changes in fat body gene expression. Egg removal triggered a fecundity increase, leading to expression changes in genes with functions in fecundity such as oogenesis and body maintenance. Dietary restriction lowered the egg production of queens and altered the expression of genes linked to autophagy, Toll signalling, cellular homeostasis, and immunity. Our study reveals that an experimental increase in fecundity causes the co-activation of reproduction and body maintenance mechanisms, shedding light on the molecular regulation of the link between longevity and fecundity in social insects.</p>
A slice from New Park Pizza, Queens NY
<p>This is a picture of a piece of pizza. </p>
Thoracic endoskeleton and posterior leg muscles in queen of ant Cataglyphis savignyi
<p>The external trochanter muscles (orange) of mid- and hindlegs originate on fused meso- and metafurcae (blue) in <em>Cataglyphis savignyi</em> queens. Depressor muscles of the petiole (light blue) originate on base of T3 furca.<br> </p> <p><strong>Micro-CT </strong>scans were performed at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan<strong>.</strong></p> <p><strong>Segmentation </strong>of the reconstructed image stacks was performed with ITK-SNAP 3.6.0. Structures were segmented manually.</p>
Pheromone relay networks in the honeybee: messenger workers distribute the queen's fertility signal throughout the hive
<p>This resource contains two items:</p><p>1. Dataset; Within-hive trajectories of individually-tagged honeybee workers.</p><p>2. Model; A C++ script for simulating queen pheromone transmission via physical contacts between bees. </p>
Data from: Joint evolution of asexuality and queen number in an ant
Ants exhibit a striking diversity of reproductive systems, varying in traits such as the number of reproductives per colony [1], the mode of daughter production (sexual or asexual) [2], and the mode of caste determination (genetic or environmental) [3]. Species employing mixed reproductive systems present a unique opportunity to explore the causes and consequences of alternative breeding strategies. Mixed reproductive systems in ants include social polymorphism in colony queen number, whereby single-queen (monogyne) and multiple-queen (polygyne) colonies co-occur within species [4, 5, 6, 7], and facultative asexuality, in which female offspring may be produced sexually or asexually within colonies [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. Here, we document a remarkable confluence of multiple mixed reproductive systems in the tropical fire ant, Solenopsis geminata, in a population with three important features: (1) polygyne colonies produce workers sexually but queens asexually, whereas monogyne colonies produce both castes sexually; (2) polygyne queens mate with monogyne males to produce workers, but monogyne queens do not mate with polygyne males; and (3) different asexual/polygyne lineages evidently were founded separately by genetically distinct founder queens, which appear to have originated from the same neighboring monogyne population. Multiple asexual/polygyne genomes are transmitted undiluted in this system, but sterile workers produced with sperm from a sexually-reproducing/monogyne population are necessary for the persistence of these lineages. The intersection of social polymorphism, facultative asexuality, and genetic caste determination marks this population of S. geminata as an embodiment of the diversity of ant reproductive systems and suggests previously unknown connections between these phenomena.
An organizing feature of bumble bee life history: worker emergence promotes queen reproduction and survival in young nests
<p>Bumble bee queens initiate nests solitarily and transition to living socially once they successfully rear their first cohort of offspring. Bumble bees are disproportionately important for early season pollination, and many populations are experiencing dramatic declines. In this system, the onset of the social stage is critical for nest survival, yet the mechanisms that facilitate this transition remain understudied. Further, the majority of conservation efforts targets the social stage of the bumble bee life cycle and do not address the solitary founding stage. We experimentally manipulated the timing of worker emergence in young nests of bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) queens to determine whether and how queen fecundity and survival are impacted by the emergence of workers in the nest. We found that queens with workers added to the nest exhibit increased ovary activation, accelerated egg laying, elevated juvenile hormone (JH) titres and also lower mortality relative to solitary queens. We also show that JH is more strongly impacted by the social environment than associated with queen reproductive state, suggesting that this key regulator of insect reproduction has expanded its function in bumble bees to also influence social organization. We further demonstrate that these effects are independent of queen social history, suggesting that this underlying mechanism promoting queen fecundity is reversible and short lived. Synchronization between queen reproductive status and emergence of workers in the nest may ultimately increase the likelihood of early nesting success in social systems with solitary nest founding. Given that bumble bee workers regulate queen physiology as we have demonstrated, the timing of worker emergence in the nest likely impacts queen fitness, colony developmental trajectories and ultimately nesting success. Collectively, our findings underline the importance of conservation interventions for bumble bees that support the early nesting period and facilitate the production and maintenance of workers in young nests.</p>
Colony fitness increases in the honey bee at queen mating frequencies higher than genetic diversity asymptote
Abstract Across the eusocial Hymenoptera, a queen's mating frequency is positively associated with her workers' genetic diversity and colony's fitness. Over 90% of a colony's diversity potential is achieved by its mother's tenth effective mating (me); however, many females mate at levels of me > 10, a zone we here call hyperpolyandry. We compared honey bee colony fitness at mating levels near and above this genetic diversity asymptote. We were interested in how hyperpolyandry affects colony phenotypes arising from both common tasks (brood care) and rare specialized tasks (parasite resistance). We used an unselected wild line of bees and a Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) line selected to resist the parasite Varroa destructor. Virgin queens were instrumentally inseminated to replicate the following queen/colony conditions: (1) VSH semen/low polyandry (observed mating number = mo = 9), (2) VSH semen/high polyandry (mo = 54), (3) wild type semen/low polyandry, or (4) wild semen/high polyandry. There was a positive effect of polyandry on brood survival, an outcome of common tasks, with highest values at mo = 54. There was an interaction between polyandry and genetics such that differences between genetic lines expressed only at mo = 54, with fewer mites in VSH colonies. These results are consistent with two hypotheses for the evolution of mating levels in excess of the genetic diversity asymptote: hyperpolyandry improves colony fitness by (1) optimizing genotype compositions for common tasks and (2) by capturing rare specialist allele combinations, resisting cliff-edge ecological catastrophes. Significance statement Polyandry is a female's practice of mating with several males, storing their sperm, and using it to produce one or more clutches of genetically diverse offspring. In the social Hymenoptera, polyandry increases the genetic diversity and task efficiency of workers, leading to improved colony fitness. Over 90% of the increase in a colony's diversity potential is achieved by its mother's tenth mating; however, many females practice hyperpolyandry, a term we reserve here for mating levels above this genetic diversity asymptote. We show that a token of colony fitness arising from common tasks, brood survival, improves universally as one moves from sub- to hyperpolyandrous mating levels. However, a colony phenotype arising from a rare parasite resistance task is only expressed in the presence of the controlling alleles and under conditions of hyperpolyandry. These results suggest adaptive mechanisms by which hyperpolyandry could evolve.
Early queen infection shapes developmental dynamics and induces long-term disease protection in incipient ant colonies
<p>Infections early in life can have enduring effects on an organism's development and immunity. In this study, we show that this equally applies to developing "superorganisms" – incipient social insect colonies. When we exposed newly mated <i>Lasius niger</i> ant queens to a low pathogen dose, their colonies grew more slowly than controls before winter, but reached similar sizes afterwards. Independent of exposure, queen hibernation survival improved when the ratio of pupae to workers was small. Queens that reared fewer pupae before worker emergence exhibited lower pathogen levels, indicating that high brood rearing efforts interfere with the ability of the queen's immune system to suppress pathogen proliferation. Early-life queen pathogen-exposure also improved the immunocompetence of her worker offspring, as demonstrated by challenging the workers to the same pathogen a year later. Transgenerational transfer of the queen's pathogen experience to her workforce can hence durably reduce the disease susceptibility of the whole superorganism.</p>
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