Division of labor in honeybees: form, function, and proximate mechanisms |
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Authors: | Brian R Johnson |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 245 Hilgard Hall, MC3114, Berkeley, CA 94720-3114, USA |
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Abstract: | Honeybees exhibit two patterns of organization of work. In the spring and summer, division of labor is used to maximize growth
rate and resource accumulation, while during the winter, worker survivorship through the poor season is paramount, and bees
become generalists. This work proposes new organismal and proximate level conceptual models for these phenomena. The first
half of the paper presents a push–pull model for temporal polyethism. Members of the nursing caste are proposed to be pushed
from their caste by the development of workers behind them in the temporal caste sequence, while middle-aged bees are pulled
from their caste via interactions with the caste ahead of them. The model is, hence, an amalgamation of previous models, in
particular, the social inhibition and foraging for work models. The second half of the paper presents a model for the proximate
basis of temporal polyethism. Temporal castes exhibit specialized physiology and switch caste when it is adaptive at the colony
level. The model proposes that caste-specific physiology is dependent on mutually reinforcing positive feedback mechanisms
that lock a bee into a particular behavioral phase. Releasing mechanisms that relate colony level information are then hypothesized
to disrupt particular components of the priming mechanisms to trigger endocrinological cascades that lead to the next temporal
caste. Priming and releasing mechanisms for the nursing caste are mapped out that are consistent with current experimental
results. Less information-rich, but plausible, mechanisms for the middle-aged and foraging castes are also presented. |
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