BIOMS Seminar: Diploid Male Production and the Evolution of Eusociality in Bees

Matt Betti, York University

Many of the primitively and advanced eusocial families within the haploid-diploid order Hymenoptera use complementary sex determination (csd) to distinguish between males and females. This phenomenon can produce diploid males who are often sterile and take the place of a more valuable female. At the precipice of sociality this can be extremely costly and may prove to be a significant hurdle to the evolution of sociality. On the other hand, diploid male production, DMP, effects both solitary bees and social bees and therefore sociality may actually protect against population losses due to DMP. In this ongoing work, we study the evolution of eusociality in the context of diploid male production. I will present some preliminary results on estimations for the number of sex determining alleles given a population size, and two models which we will use to determine the effects of DMP on the evolution of eusociality.