PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Eusocial insects, such as stingless bees (Meliponini), depend on division of labour, overlapping generations, and collaborative brood care to ensure the functionality and success of their colony. Female workers transition through a range of age-specific tasks during their lifespan (i.e., age-polyethism) and play a central role in the success of a colony. These age-specific tasks (e.g., brood care or foraging) often closely coincide with key physiological changes necessary to ensure optimal performance. However, our understanding of how nutrition, age, and polyethism may affect the development of such physiological traits in stingless bees remains limited. Here we show that pollen consumption and age-polyethism govern hypopharyngeal gland (HPG) acini size and protein content in Tetragonula pagdeni. By conducting a controlled laboratory experiment we monitored the effect of pollen consumption on worker bee survival as well as assessed how a pollen diet and age affected their HPG acini width and protein content. Further, we sampled nurses and foragers from field colonies to measure the effect of age-polyethism on HPG acini width. We found that pollen consumption enhanced survival and led to increased HPG acini width and protein content and that HPG acini were as expected largest in nurse bees. Our findings highlight the beneficial effects of an adequate diet for physiological development and health in stingless bees and reveal that age-polyethism is the key factor governing HPG size in worker bees. As HPGs are imperative for collaborative brood care-an essential component of eusociality-the data provide a foundation for future studies to investigate the impact of potential environmental stressors on a critical physiological trait in stingless bees which may serve as a proxy to understand the effects at the colony level.
摘要：
Eusocial昆虫，例如无刺蜜蜂（Meliponini），取决于分工，重叠的世代，和协作育苗护理，以确保其殖民地的功能和成功。女工在其一生中通过一系列特定年龄的任务过渡(即，年龄-多伦理)，并在殖民地的成功中起着核心作用。这些特定年龄的任务(例如，育卵护理或觅食）通常与确保最佳性能所必需的关键生理变化紧密相关。然而,我们对营养的理解，年龄,多伦理可能会影响无刺蜜蜂的这种生理特征的发展。在这里，我们表明花粉的消耗和年龄的多元性决定了四角龙骨中下咽腺（HPG）的腺泡大小和蛋白质含量。通过进行受控的实验室实验，我们监测了花粉消耗对工蜂生存的影响，并评估了花粉饮食和年龄如何影响其HPG腺泡宽度和蛋白质含量。Further,我们从田间菌落中抽取护士和觅食者样本，以测量年龄多伦理对HPG腺泡宽度的影响。我们发现，花粉消耗可提高存活率，并导致HPG腺泡宽度和蛋白质含量增加，并且HPG腺泡在护士蜜蜂中达到预期的最大。我们的发现强调了充足的饮食对无刺蜜蜂的生理发育和健康的有益影响，并揭示了年龄多伦理是控制工蜂HPG大小的关键因素。由于HPG对于协作育巢护理是必不可少的，这是Eusociality的重要组成部分，因此数据为未来的研究奠定了基础，以研究潜在的环境压力因素对无st蜜蜂的关键生理性状的影响，这可能是理解影响的代表在殖民地水平。
