ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2018
Impact of immune activation on stored sperm viability in ant queens.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mating-induced patterns of spermathecal fluid protein expression in two eusocial insect species, Lasius niger and Apis mellifera.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Conserved and Unique Protein Expression Patterns Across Reproductive Stage Transitions in Social Hymenopteran Queens.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- An evolutionarily conserved pathway mediated by neuroparsin-A regulates reproductive plasticity in ants.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A supergene-controlling social structure in Alpine ants also affects the dispersal ability and fecundity of each sex.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Investigating trade-offs between ovary activation and immune protein expression in bumble bee (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Fertility costs of cryptic viral infections in a model social insect.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Mating Stimulates the Immune Response and Sperm Storage-Related Genes Expression in Spermathecae of Bumblebee (Frontiers in genetics · 2021Article
- Article
- The role of oxidative stress in postcopulatory selection.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ant queens mate on a single occasion early in life and store millions of sperm cells in their spermatheca. By carefully using stored sperm to fertilize eggs, they can produce large colonies of thousands of individuals. Queens can live for decades and their lifetime reproductive success is dependent on their ability to keep stored sperm alive. Maintaining high sperm viability requires metabolic energy which could trade-off with other costly processes such as immunity. We tested the impact of immune activation on the survival of stored sperm by prompting Lasius niger ant queens to mount a melanization response and subsequently measuring sperm viability in their spermatheca. Since queens face different challenges that influence energy allocation depending on the life stage of their colony, we measured sperm viability after immune activation in both newly mated queens (incipient) and in queens 1 year after mating (established). We found that immune activation reduced sperm viability in established queens but not in incipient queens, showing that the cost of immunity on sperm preservation depends on the life stage. Unexpectedly, established queens had significantly higher sperm viability in their spermatheca compared to incipient queens suggesting that ant queens are able to remove dead sperm from their spermatheca.
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