Advantages and Disadvantages of Haplodiploidy on Whitefly
By Alan Soffan
Normally individuals, including insect has males and females that arise from fertilized eggs,
each sex is diploid, that is possesses two sets of genes, one from each parents, But in some insect such
as hymenoptera, the fertilized eggs become female and unfertilized eggs becomes male, so female has
normal set of genes diploid, while male are haploid, this pattern of reproduction called as haplodiploidy
(Horn, 1976; Mathews and Mathews, 1978). This female insect can lay either fertilized or unfertilized
egs by controlling a sphincter muscle that permit the release of sperm from the spermathecal duct, so
the female has an ability to determine the sex of their offspring (Evans,1984).
Advantages

The sex ratio desired in a colony can be determined by female by controlling a sphincter muscle
that allow sperm release

Since female are more important to support the colony such as make a nest, feeding the young
etc, so in order to build up the colony they can determine to have more female (Evans, 1984).

The female may have a greater tolerance to the environmental factor by reproducing male
parthenogenetically when there are no males (Adamson and Ludwing, 1993; Atkins, 1978)

Producing males can be regulated until time of production of a new brood of potential queen
(Evans, 1984)

The intrinsic rate of increase of a haplodiploidy species would be 1.43 times greater than
diploid species (Adamson and Ludwing, 1993)
Disadvantages

To have a female offspring, the mother/female must wait to mate with her parthenogenetically
produced sons/male (Adamson and Ludwing, 1993)

There is an increasing expression of deleterious alleles in male (Thornhill,1993)
Reference
Adamson, Martin., Donald ludwing.1993 Oedipal mating as a factor in sex allocation in
haplodiploids.Pkil.Trans.R.Soc.Lond.B (1993) 341, 195-202
Atkins, Michael D.1978.Insects in Prespective.Mac Millan Publishing Co.Inc.New York.513p.
Evans, Howard, E.1984. Insect.Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.London.436p.
Horn, David J. 1976. Insect Biology.W.B.Saunders.Philladelphia.439p
Thornhill , Nancy Wilmsen.1993.The Natural History of Inbreeding and Outbreeding: Theoretical and
Empirical Perspectives. University of Chicago Press.575p.
By Arya Widyawan
In most insects, male and female arise from fertilized eggs; each sex is diploid, that is posses
two sets of genes, one from each parent. However, in some insects such as whitefly, all fertilized eggs
become females and unfertilized eggs become male. In this case, male are haploid, that is have only
one set of gene.
Being male haploid has some consequence. He intends to increase the number of population in
order to keep his gene in the population. Male haploid will never have son but have grandfather. He
receives all his gene-in one of two alleles from his diploid mother. He shares an average of one half of
his gene with his brother but possesses only an average of one fourth of his gene with his sister. This
condition make male haploid to have more to gain by fathering daughters, with whom they share an
average one half of their genes than by assisting in the production of more sisters, with whom they
share an average of only one fourth of their genes (Mathews and Mathews 1978).
Another advantage of producing a male haploid is on the point of view of the parent female. By
producing male haploid, maternal alleles are twice as frequent in gametes of haploid Sons as in
gametes of diploid son. This means that female may contribute more to the F2 generation (Bull 1979).
Pedigree with diploid son
A1 A2
(female)
A3 A4 (male)
A1 A3
A2 A4
A1
A3
A2
Pedigree with haploid son
SONS
A4
A1 A2
FEMALE
PARENTS
A1
A1
A2
A1
THEIR GAMETE
Figure 1. Maternal alleles (a1 and a2) appears 2 times in the gametes of sons.
(Bull 1979)
A2
A2
In other case, there is also a possibility of disadvantage of having male haploid in a population.
If there is a aneuploid sperm (abnormal number of chromosome) in the male haploid, all female will
suffer proportionally (Bull 1979).
Reference
Mathews, R.W. & J.R. Mathews, 1978. Insect behavior. John Willey and Sons, New York.
Bull, J.J. 1979. An advantage for the evolution of male haploidy and system with similar genetic
transmission. Heredity (3), 361-381
By Boy Valenza
Based on their ploidy levels in sex determination, arthropods can be grouped into four groups:
diplo-diploidy, arrhenotoxy, thelyotoxy, and parahaploidy (Hoy, 2003). Both sexes of many arthropods
are diploid (2n, diplo-diploidy), whereas others have haploid males and diploid females (n and 2n,
haplodiploidy or arrhenotoxy). Other species consist primarily of diploid females where haploid males
rerely are produced (thelytoxy). In some species, haploid males are produced by the loss of paternally
derived chromosomes after fertilization (parahaploidy) (Hoy, 2003). Most of whitefly species are
arrhenotoky, where females are diploid which are produced from fertilized eggs and males are haploid
which come from unfertilized eggs (Hoddle, 1999 ; Henter, 2003). In other words we can say that
female whitefly has complete number of chromosomes, twenty two chromosomes, while the male only
has half number of chromosomes, eleven chromosomes (Mittler, 1946).
There are advantages and disadvantages of being haplodiploidy on whitefly. The first advantage
is the female whitefly, the mother, able to control or manipulate the sex ratio of her progeny (Werren,
1980 in Thornhill and Alcock, 1983 ; Wrensch and Ebbert, 1992). If the number of males in white fly
population are very low, the female need only lay unfertilized eggs to produce the males to maintain the
continuity of their population. The second advantage of being haplodiploidy on whitefly is the female
can escape from the problem of mate finding for doing copulation and also reducing the competition in
mating process (Wrensch and Ebbert, 1992). It means the female can save their energy for waiting or
searching the male, because she can produce another male parthenogenetically. By this condition a new
population can be established despite her failure to mate prior to dispersal (Wrensch and Ebbert, 1992).
The disadvantage of being haplodiploidy on whitefly is the female whitefly can not produce the female
offsprings parthenogenetically looklike the aphids do. Female whitefly will absolutely rely on the
presence of male whitefly for producing new generation of females.
References:
Henter, H. J. 2003. Inbreeding Depression and Haplodiploidy: Experimental Measures in a Parasitoid
and Comparisons across Diploid and Haplodiploid Insect Taxa. Society for the Study of
Evolution. □
Hoddle, M. S. 1999. The Biology and Management of Silverleaf Whitefly, Bemisia argentifolii Bellows
and Perring (Homoptera: Aleyrodidae) on Greenhouse Grown Ornamentals. Article. Department
of Entomology. University of California. o
Hoy, M. A. 2003. Insect Molecular Genetics: An Introduction to Principles and Applications. Academic
Press. □
Mittler, S. 1946. Production of Female Offspring by Virgin Females in the Greenhouse Whitefly,
Trialeurodes vaporariorum, Under the Influence of High Temperatures. The University of
Chicago Press. Δ
Thornhill, R and Alcock, J. 1983. The Evolution of Insect Mating Systems.Harvard University Press.
London. □
Wrensch, D. L and Ebbert, M. A. 1992. Evolution and Diversity of Sex Ratio: In Haplodiploid Insects
and Mites. Springer Publisher. □
By Haris Setyaningrum
An insect like another animals has specially character which can differentiated them to each
character. One of the character that can be differs is genomic character. In insect we know that some of
insect have haploid chromosomes and another have diploid chromosomes. It sure that all type of these
chromosome will impact to individual it self. The famous condition in insect are the male haploid
insect. It happen like in diptera, hymenoptera, Lepidoptera, orthoptera and coleopteran (Capinera,
2008). But generally we can separated then into advantage and disadvantage:
Advantage:

balance the population of insect it self

in some condition it as strategy to response the threshold condition(unsupported condition)

its as resulted from inbreeding that unsuccessful but can resulted the male haploid. Because in
normal condition unsuccessful inbreeding not give the individual.

generally haploid generation is unfertile and use for protection of colony

as mechanism to control of diversity genetic
Disadvantage :
 the male losses the ability to fertilized the egg from the female.
 production fertile generation is low
 more sensitive to radiation of light as case in Drosophila melanogaster
 generally haploid generation shorter life span than diploid
( Capinera, 2008; Cowan & Stahlhut, 2004 ; Crozier & Pamilo, 1996; Kanungo, 1994)
References:
□Capinera, John L. 2008. Encyclopedia of Entomology. Springer. UK
ΔCowan, David P and Stahlhut, Julie K. 2004. Functionally reproductive diploid and
in an inbreeding hymenopteran with complementary sex
haploid males
determination. Proc Natl Acad Sci U
S A. 2004 July 13; 101(28): 10374–10379.
□Crozier, Rossiter Henry and Pamilo, Pekka. 1996. Evolution of Social Insect Colonies: Sex Allocation
and Kin Selection. Oxfor University press. Oxford.
□Kanungo, Madhu Sudan. 1994. Genes and Aging. Cambridge University Press.Cambridge .