Mating-induced patterns of spermathecal fluid protein expression in two eusocial insect species, Lasius niger and Apis mellifera
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Eusocial insect queens exhibit some of the most extreme durations of sperm storage in the animal kingdom. This extended lifespan of sperm within the queen's storage organ (the spermatheca) after mating is largely sustained by the spermathecal fluid matrix-a rich and proteinaceous secretion that fills the void volume within the spermatheca. Here, we conducted a comparative proteomics study on mating-induced changes in spermathecal fluid of two long-lived hymenopteran species, Lasius niger and Apis mellifera. We found some similarities between species; for example, enolase and other enzymes responsible for carbohydrate metabolism were among the top differentially expressed proteins in both A. mellifera and L. niger. Additionally, both species exhibited post-mating upregulation of catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and Mn-conjugated superoxide dismutase (SOD), all of which are important antioxidant enzymes. However, we also identified notable differences, with Cu/Zn-conjugated SODs being consistently downregulated after mating in L. niger but upregulated in A. mellifera. Likewise, canonical immune effectors (phenoloxidase and lysozyme) showed similar patterns of expression in both species, (with phenoloxidase remaining unchanged and lysozyme increasing after mating), but ferritins, which are multifunctional antioxidant proteins that are also induced by immune challenges, differed, increasing in L. niger but decreasing in A. mellifera. Herein, we discuss expression patterns of these proteins and additional immune proteins, hexamerins, odorant binding proteins, and a key carbohydrate metabolism enzyme (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase) in the context of the differential life histories of these two eusocial insect species.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".