The female under study did not have a maternal nuclear genome.
A team of scientists from the University of Sydney discovered a female honey bee that has two fathers and no mother. This is the first such individual observed in nature, reported in the journal Biology Letters.
Female bees, ants, and wasps emerge from fertilized eggs, which have one set of chromosomes from each parent, while males are the result of unfertilized eggs. Moreover, these insects have such a phenomenon as gynandromorphism. This allows them to combine genotype and external characteristics of male and female.
In honeybees, gynandromorphs usually develop from a combination of a diploid zygote and haploid male tissue derived from so-called “second sperm” (when more than one sperm enters the egg and fuses with the original cell cluster). These cells then begin to divide and become part of the developing embryo.
To better understand the reproduction flexibility of honeybees, scientists examined 11 individuals with probable gynandromorphism. To begin with, they examined the morphology of their various tissues. Then DNA was extracted from each tissue and genetic origin (maternal or paternal) was identified through genotyping.
Genetic studies have shown that nine out of 11 gynandromorphs had two or three fathers. It is surprising that one gynandromorph - a female - had two fathers, but there was no mother.
“The female, who had two fathers, was registered in haplodiploids for the first time. This is an interesting phenomenon, given that attempts at fusion of two sperm samples in mammals have not been found,”the researchers emphasized.
Scientists are confident that the discovery emphasizes flexibility in insect reproduction and paves the way for the discovery of potentially new social structures at the colony level.
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