Regulation of oogenesis in honey bee workers via programed cell death

[Display omitted] •Workers not exposed to queen pheromone can have well-developed follicles.•Workers exposed to queen pheromone have degenerating oocytes.•An evolutionarily-conserved checkpoint is utilised to abort oocytes.•Adaptive reproductive plasticity of the young adult worker. Reproductive division of labour characterises eusociality. Currently little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the ‘sterility’ of the worker caste, but queen pheromone plays a major role in regulating the reproductive state. Here we investigate oogenesis in the young adult honey bee worker ovary in the presence of queen pheromone and in its absence. When queen pheromone is absent, workers can activate their ovaries and have well-developed follicles. When queen pheromone is present, even though workers have non-activated ovaries, they continually produce oocytes which are aborted at an early stage. Therefore, irrespective of the presence of the queen, the young adult worker ovary contains oocytes. By this means young workers retain reproductive plasticity. The degeneration of the germ cells in the ovarioles of workers in the presence of queen pheromone has the morphological hallmarks of programmed cell death. Therefore the mechanistic basis of ‘worker sterility’ relies in part on the regulation of oogenesis via programmed cell death. Our results suggest that honey bees have co-opted a highly conserved checkpoint at mid-oogenesis to regulate the fertility of the worker caste.