Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Extreme temperatures associated with climate change are expected to impact the physiology and fertility of a variety of insects, including honey bees. Most previous work on this topic has focused on female honey bees (workers and queens), and comparatively little research has investigated how heat exposure affects males (drones). To address this gap, we tested body mass, viral infections, and population origin as predictors of drone survival and sperm viability in a series of heat challenge assays. We found that individual body mass was highly influential, with heavier drones being more likely to survive a heat challenge (4 h at 42°C) than smaller drones. In a separate experiment, we compared the survival of Northern California and Southern California drones in response to the same heat challenge (4 h at 42°C), and found that Southern Californian drones - which are enriched for African ancestry - were more likely to survive a heat challenge than drones originating from Northern California. To avoid survivor bias, we conducted sperm heat challenges using in vitro assays and found remarkable variation in sperm heat resilience among drones sourced from different commercial beekeeping operations, with some exhibiting no reduction in sperm viability after heat challenge and others exhibiting a 75% reduction in sperm viability. Further investigating potential causal factors for such variation, we found no association between drone mass and viability of sperm in in vitro sperm heat challenge assays, but virus inoculation (with Israeli acute paralysis virus) exacerbated the negative effect of heat on sperm viability. These experiments establish a vital framework for understanding the importance of population origin and comorbidities for drone heat sensitivity.
Source: PLoS ONE
Authors: Alison McAfee, Bradley N. Metz, Patrick Connor, Keana Du, Christopher W. Allen, Luis A. Frausto, Mark P. Swenson, Kylah S. Phillips, Madison Julien, Zoe Rempel, Robert W. Currie, Boris Baer, David R. Tarpy, Leonard J. Foster
Language: English
Subfield: Insect Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,382
Funders: U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Carolina State University, Genome Canada, Project Apis m., Mitacs, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Army, University of California, Riverside, Office of the President, University of California, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Army Research Office
OpenAlex ID: W4407268949