Honey bee queens store and use sperm for years after mating, but doing so may require a dampened immune response to keep the sperm viable. Alison McAfee et al. tested this hypothesis using mass spectrometry-based proteomics in queens with high and low sperm quantity and quality and found that lower measures of fertility correlated with high levels of the immune effector lysozyme, consistent with a trade-off between immunity and fertility.
- Alison McAfee
- Abigail Chapman
- David R. Tarpy
