TY - JOUR
T1 - Pleiotropy, epistasis and new QTL
T2 - The genetic architecture of honey bee foraging behavior
AU - Rüppell, O.
AU - Pankiw, T.
AU - Page, Robert
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank David Nielsen, Kim Fondrk, Martin Beye, and Merideth Humphries for their great assistance during this study. We received crucial advice from Greg Hunt and his group, and the labor of Mindy Nelson and Mike Niemela were invaluable to the success of this study. This research was funded by a Feodor-Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to O.R. and National Science Foundation grants IBN 0090482 and IBN 0076811 to R.E.P.
PY - 2004/11
Y1 - 2004/11
N2 - The regulation of division of labor in social insects, particularly in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), has received considerable attention from a number of biological subdisciplines, including quantitative and behavioral genetics, because of the high complexity of the behavioral traits involved. The foraging choices of honey bee workers can be accurately quantified, and previous studies have made the foraging behavior of honey bees one of the best studied naturally occurring behavioral phenotypes. Three quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been identified that influence a set of foraging variables, including the concentration of nectar collected and the amount of pollen and nectar brought back to the hive. This study extends previous genetic investigations and represents the most comprehensive investigation of the genetic architecture of these foraging variables. We examined the effects of markers for the three established QTL and for one further candidate gene (Amfor), in two reciprocal backcross populations. These populations were also used to carry out two new QTL mapping studies, with over 400 Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP®) markers in each. We detected a variety of effects of the genetic markers for the established QTL and the candidate gene, which were mostly epistatic in nature. A few new QTL could be detected with a variety of mapping techniques. Our results add complexity to the genetic architecture of the foraging behavior of the honey bee. Specifically, we support the hypotheses that pln1, pln2, pln3, and Amfor are involved in the regulation of foraging behavior in the honey bee and add some new factors that deserve further study in the future.
AB - The regulation of division of labor in social insects, particularly in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), has received considerable attention from a number of biological subdisciplines, including quantitative and behavioral genetics, because of the high complexity of the behavioral traits involved. The foraging choices of honey bee workers can be accurately quantified, and previous studies have made the foraging behavior of honey bees one of the best studied naturally occurring behavioral phenotypes. Three quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been identified that influence a set of foraging variables, including the concentration of nectar collected and the amount of pollen and nectar brought back to the hive. This study extends previous genetic investigations and represents the most comprehensive investigation of the genetic architecture of these foraging variables. We examined the effects of markers for the three established QTL and for one further candidate gene (Amfor), in two reciprocal backcross populations. These populations were also used to carry out two new QTL mapping studies, with over 400 Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP®) markers in each. We detected a variety of effects of the genetic markers for the established QTL and the candidate gene, which were mostly epistatic in nature. A few new QTL could be detected with a variety of mapping techniques. Our results add complexity to the genetic architecture of the foraging behavior of the honey bee. Specifically, we support the hypotheses that pln1, pln2, pln3, and Amfor are involved in the regulation of foraging behavior in the honey bee and add some new factors that deserve further study in the future.
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U2 - 10.1093/jhered/esh072
DO - 10.1093/jhered/esh072
M3 - Article
C2 - 15475393
AN - SCOPUS:6044238246
SN - 0022-1503
VL - 95
SP - 481
EP - 491
JO - Journal of Heredity
JF - Journal of Heredity
IS - 6
ER -