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Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers

In eusocial insect colonies, workers have individual preferences for performing particular tasks. Previous research suggests that these preferences might be associated with worker reproductive potential; however, different studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study constitutes the first c...

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Autores principales: Kuszewska, Karolina, Miler, Krzysztof, Woyciechowski, Michal
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29930293
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27844-w
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author Kuszewska, Karolina
Miler, Krzysztof
Woyciechowski, Michal
author_facet Kuszewska, Karolina
Miler, Krzysztof
Woyciechowski, Michal
author_sort Kuszewska, Karolina
collection PubMed
description In eusocial insect colonies, workers have individual preferences for performing particular tasks. Previous research suggests that these preferences might be associated with worker reproductive potential; however, different studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study constitutes the first comparison of foraging preferences between genetically similar normal and rebel honeybee workers, which present different reproductive potential. We found that rebels, which have a higher reproductive potential than normal workers, displayed a delayed onset of foraging and a stronger tendency to collect nectar compared with normal workers. These results support the hypothesis that workers with high reproductive potential invest more in their own egg laying and avoid risky tasks such as foraging. In contrast, the results do not support the hypothesis that reproductive workers initiate foraging earlier in life than normal workers and specialize in pollen foraging.
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spelling pubmed-60134972018-06-27 Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers Kuszewska, Karolina Miler, Krzysztof Woyciechowski, Michal Sci Rep Article In eusocial insect colonies, workers have individual preferences for performing particular tasks. Previous research suggests that these preferences might be associated with worker reproductive potential; however, different studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study constitutes the first comparison of foraging preferences between genetically similar normal and rebel honeybee workers, which present different reproductive potential. We found that rebels, which have a higher reproductive potential than normal workers, displayed a delayed onset of foraging and a stronger tendency to collect nectar compared with normal workers. These results support the hypothesis that workers with high reproductive potential invest more in their own egg laying and avoid risky tasks such as foraging. In contrast, the results do not support the hypothesis that reproductive workers initiate foraging earlier in life than normal workers and specialize in pollen foraging. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-06-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6013497/ /pubmed/29930293 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27844-w Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Kuszewska, Karolina
Miler, Krzysztof
Woyciechowski, Michal
Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title_full Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title_fullStr Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title_full_unstemmed Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title_short Honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
title_sort honeybee rebel workers invest less in risky foraging than normal workers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013497/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29930293
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27844-w
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