Queen Execution, Diploid Males, and Selection For and Against Polyandry in the Brazilian Stingless BeeScaptotrigona depilis

Female mating frequency varies. Determining the causes of this variation is an active research area. We tested the hypothesis that in stingless bees, Meliponini, single mating is due to the execution of queens that make a matched mating at the complementary sex determination locus and have diploid male offspring. We studied the Brazilian species Scaptotrigona depilis. We made up 70 test colonies so that 50% (single matched mating), 25% (double...