Haplodiploidy


Haplodiploidy means that a male develops from an unfertilized egg and are therefore haploid. While females developed from normally fertilized eggs and are diploid.

Sisters are related by .75

Haplodiploidy is only in Hymenoptera which has 11 of the examples of eusociality evolution.

A cautionary note:The relatedness values we have just calculated assume that the queen only mates with 1 male. If two workers do not share the same father, they are only related by .25. In honeybees whose queen mates up to 20 times, the average relatedness is far less than .5. However, workers are able to discriminate between suisters that are more or less related.


Revised from a page on Altruism in Social Insects.

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