Synopsis. Brood weight and number of eggs per brood are primarily determined by female body size in brachyuran crabs. Brood weight exhib? its an isometric relationship spanning more than four orders of magnitude in body weight among 33 non-pinnotherid species, with brood size being constrained to about 10% of female body weight by the space available for yolk accumulation within the cephalothor...

The hormone prolactin (PRL) is important for the regulation of parental care in many species of mammals, birds and fish, and for alloparental care (care directed at nondescendant young) in some mammals and birds. Its significance in alloparental brood care of cooperatively breeding fish has not yet been assessed. Here, we test the role of PRL in brood care behavior of the cooperatively breeding...

Theory predicts that overall population sex ratios should be around parity. But when individual females can receive higher fitness from offspring of one sex, they may benefit by biasing their brood sex ratios accordingly. In lekking species, higher variance in male reproductive success relative to that of females predicts that male offspring gain disproportionately from favorable rearing condit...

might allow sister-sister discrimination. The locations of the cues used in discrimination are not known. Egg-stage switches indicated that eggs or the comb, or their combination, are adequate for discrimination of a sister's comb from a nonsister's. For several reasons (7) we suspect that discrimination cues reside in the comb, not in brood members themselves, and are odors applied by the foun...

The European Foulbrood (EFB) is a bacterial disease that affects the honey bee brood. The genetic resistance of some species of bees to this disease may allow, especially in favourable environmental conditions, to overcome the infection without suffering serious damage. However, it should be noted that, even if characterised by a better prognosis than the American Foulbrood, in some areas the E...

abstract: mostly honey bee consumes pollen as fermented and fermentation improves foods biological value in some cases.  in this study we evaluate the nutritional effects of fermented diets on honey bee body protein and brood rearing in colonies. this experiment conducted on honey bee colonies with different diets in a completely randomized design with 6 treatments and 7 replicates for 50 days....

Since obligate avian brood parasites depend completely on the effort of other host species for rearing their progeny, the availability of hosts will be a critical resource for their life history. Circumstantial evidence suggests that intense competition for host species may exist not only within but also between species. So far, however, few studies have demonstrated whether the interspecific c...

European foulbrood is a worldwide disease affecting the honey bee brood. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Fructobacillus sp. EFB-N1, which was isolated from an infected honey bee larva derived from a Swiss European foulbrood outbreak. The genome consists of 68 contigs and harbors 1,629 predicted protein-encoding genes.

Honeybee colonies maintain brood nest temperatures of 33-36 degrees C. We investigated brood nest thermoregulation at the level of individual worker behaviour and the transfer of heat from workers to the brood. Worker bees contribute to the regulation of brood nest temperature by producing heat while sitting motionless on the caps of brood cells. We report here an additional, newly observed hea...

Varroa destructor continues to threaten colonies of European honey bees. General hygiene, and more specific Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH), provide resistance towards the Varroa mite in a number of stocks. In this study, 32 Russian (RHB) and 14 Italian honey bee colonies were assessed for the VSH trait using two different assays. Firstly, colonies were assessed using the standard VSH behavioura...