New components of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queen retinue pheromone
AUTOR(ES)
Keeling, Christopher I.
FONTE
The National Academy of Sciences
RESUMO
The honey bee queen produces pheromones that function in both releaser and primer roles such as attracting a retinue of workers around her, attracting drones on mating flights, preventing workers from reproducing at the individual (worker egg-laying) and colony (swarming) level, and regulating several other aspects of colony functioning. The queen mandibular pheromone (QMP), consisting of five synergistic components, is the only pheromone chemically identified in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queen, but this pheromone does not fully duplicate the pheromonal activity of a full queen extract. To identify the remaining unknown compounds for retinue attraction, honey bee colonies were selectively bred to have low response to synthetic QMP and high response to a queen extract in a laboratory retinue bioassay. Workers from these colonies were then used in the bioassay to guide the isolation and identification of the remaining active components. Four new compounds were identified from several glandular sources that account for the majority of the difference in retinue attraction between synthetic QMP and queen extract: methyl (Z)-octadec-9-enoate (methyl oleate), (E)-3-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-prop-2-en-1-ol (coniferyl alcohol), hexadecan-1-ol, and (Z9,Z12,Z15)-octadeca-9,12,15-trienoic acid (linolenic acid). These compounds were inactive alone or in combination, and they only elicited attraction in the presence of QMP. There was still unidentified activity remaining in the queen extract. The queen therefore produces a synergistic, multiglandular pheromone blend of at least nine compounds for retinue attraction, the most complex pheromone blend known for inducing a single behavior in any organism.
ACESSO AO ARTIGO
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=153582Documentos Relacionados
- Heterosis in the Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera L.)
- Viability and Sex Determination in the Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera L.)
- The Evolution of Multiple Mating Behavior by Honey Bee Queens (APIS MELLIFERA L.)
- Insights into the dynamics of hind leg development in honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queen and worker larvae - A morphology/differential gene expression analysis
- A ABELHA MELÃFERA AFRICANIZADA (Apis mellifera L.) NA POLINIZAÃÃO E PRODUÃÃO DE ÃLEO DAS SEMENTES DO PINHÃO MANSO (Jatropha curcas L.)