Blowing your mind with bees and wasps: Day 2
Did you know that bees and wasps exhibit haplodiploidy, meaning that the female can determine whether the egg she is laying will be male or female.
Unfertilised eggs will be male while fertilised eggs will be female!
Meaning! Males have no father and cannot have sons, but they have a grandfather and can have grandsons. 🤯
Female eggs also tend to be provisioned with more food in the nest cell to aid in size and ovary development.
@entospace No Y chromosome? 🤯😄
@Lesley4Nature @entospace No Y chromosome for bees, which is why the worker cast can, in some species (e.g., bumblebees), lay unfertilized eggs that grow into males.
There's a very interesting evolutionary dynamic there, with the daughters competing with the queen, and the queen actively seeking and destroying the eggs of workers. When the queen dies earlier than expected, a colony saves itself–so to speak–, genetically, by rearing males.
The 2010 book by Dave Goulson "Bumblebees Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation" goes into quite some detail about this. It's fascinating.
#bumblebees #bees #entomology
