Juvenile malnourishment affects learning and task performance in many species, and is well documented in mammals, but poorly studied in invertebrates. We examined the effect of nutritional stress during larval development on the longevity and task performance of honey bee (Apis mellifera) adults. Nutritional stress occurs naturally in honey bee colonies when pollen, which provides honey bees wi...

In most animals, longevity is achieved at the expense of fertility, but queen honey bees do not show this tradeoff. Queens are both long-lived and fertile, whereas workers, derived from the same genome, are both relatively short-lived and normally sterile. It has been suggested, on the basis of results from workers, that vitellogenin (Vg), best known as a yolk protein synthesized in the abdomin...

Megachile rotundata (F.), an adventive, gregarious, cavity-nesting, leaf cutting bee, is used throughout North America for the pollination of alfalfa, Medicago sativa L., seed crops. We examined the inßuence of various postcocooning (prewintering) temperature regimes on development, survival, emergence time, and longevity in both nondiapausing and diapausing forms of this species. Diapausing ma...

Insects have been used as an exemplary model in studying longevity, from extrinsic mortality pressures to intrinsic senescence. In the highly eusocial insects, great degrees of variation in lifespan exist between morphological castes in relation to extreme divisions of labour, but of particular interest are the primitively eusocial insects. These species represent the ancestral beginnings of eu...

Models of social conflict in animal societies generally assume that within-group conflict reduces the value of a communal resource. For many animals, however, the primary cost of conflict is increased mortality. We develop a simple inclusive fitness model of social conflict that takes this cost into account. We show that longevity substantially reduces the level of within-group conflict, which ...

BACKGROUND Recent elevated winter loss of honey bee colonies is a major concern. The presence of the mite Varroa destructor in colonies places an important pressure on bee health. V. destructor shortens the lifespan of individual bees, while long lifespan during winter is a primary requirement to survive until the next spring. We investigated in two subsequent years the effects of different lev...

INTRODUCTION Honeybees are constantly exposed to a wide range of vital and non-vital pressures that may interact with each other and affect the health or survival of the insects. Pesticides are the main danger for the insects, and they subsequently have impacts on human and environmental health. METHODS Field research was conducted in the apiary of Hada Al Sham Research Station, where the wor...

Experimental and Natural Variation in Hovering Flight Capacity in Bees, Hymenoptera: Apidae By Jason Thomas Vance Dr. Stephen Roberts, Examination Committee Chair Associate Professor of Biological Sciences University of Nevada, Las Vegas In honey bees, the capacity for flight underlies many behaviors which impact fitness and longevity, such as the ability to forage or evade predators. However, ...