Abstract
Division of labor is a striking feature observed in honey bees and many other social insects. Division of labor has been claimed to benefit fitness. In honey bees, the adult work force may be viewed as divided between non-foraging hive bees that rear brood and maintain the nest, and foragers that collect food outside the nest. Honey bee brood pheromone is a larval pheromone that serves as an excellent empirical tool to manipulate foraging behaviors and thus division of labor in the honey bee. Here we use two different doses of brood pheromone to alter the foraging stimulus environment, thus changing demographics of colony division of labor, to demonstrate how division of labor associated with brood rearing affects colony growth rate. We examine the effects of these different doses of brood pheromone on individual foraging ontogeny and specialization, colony level foraging behavior, and individual glandular protein synthesis. Low brood pheromone treatment colonies exhibited significantly higher foraging population, decreased age of first foraging and greater foraging effort, resulting in greater colony growth compared to other treatments. This study demonstrates how division of labor associated with brood rearing affects honey bee colony growth rate, a token of fitness.
Highlights
Division of labor is one of the key features that have contributed to the great ecological success of social insects [1], [2]
Low BP treatments foraged at a significantly younger age followed by controls and High BP treatments respectively. This is the first study to directly connect division of labor associated with brood rearing to colony fitness through the mechanisms of brood pheromone modulation of brood rearing behavioral suites
Colonies receiving a relatively low amount of brood pheromone fielded a higher proportion of pollen foragers compared to controls and colonies treated with a relatively high amount of brood pheromone
Summary
Division of labor is one of the key features that have contributed to the great ecological success of social insects [1], [2]. The most prominent behavioral change is observed when the bees are about three weeks old, the age when they start foraging [6], [7]. Plasticity is an important attribute of division of labor and colonies respond to changes in the internal and external environment by manipulating the ratios of individual workers involved in different tasks [3]. Such plasticity in division of labor can be partially attributed to behavioral flexibility of the individual workers [3]
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