Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Mapping the phenotypic and genetic architectures suggested that
foraging division of labor in honey bees is derived from networks of
genes and hormones involved in regulating reproduction, giving rise to
the reproductive-ground-plan hypothesis of Chapter 7. Selection for
pollen hoarding has changed the reproductive anatomy of workers, and
Chapter 8 shows how the developmental mechanisms that give rise to
the dif erent female castes (workers, and queens) were used to generate
workers with dif erent-sized ovaries, which in turn af ect their re-
sponses to environmental stimuli and thus their behavior as foragers
and the amount of stored pollen.
Chapter 9 is an attempt to use what we know about stimulus-
response relationships, pollen and nectar foraging, and the phenotypic
and genetic architectures of pollen hoarding to build a model of the
regulatory architecture of pollen hoarding. It is obviously a far more
complex task than I can actually manage, but I hope that the process
will serve to illuminate what we don't know and help guide future re-
search. Chapter 10 completes the organizational structure of a scien-
tii c paper that my mentor Harry Laidlaw taught me: (1) tell them what
you are going to tell them (Chapter 1); (2) tell them (Chapters 2-9); and
(3) tell them what you told them (Chapter 10).
1.1 Natural History of the Honey Bee
A honey bee colony typically consists of 10,000 to 40,000 worker bees, all
females; zero to several hundred males (drones), depending on the time of
year; and a single queen, the mother of the colony (Figure 1.2). h e nest is
usually constructed within a dark cavity and is composed of vertically
oriented, parallel combs made of wax secreted by the workers (Figure 1.3,
upper panel). Each comb can contain thousands of individual hexagonal
cells on each of the vertical surfaces. h e individual cells of the combs
serve as vessels for the storage of honey (the carbohydrate food source for
bees) and pollen (the source of protein) and as individual nurseries for
developing eggs, larvae, and pupae. In addition, the combs are the social
substrate of the colony. h e nest has an or gan i za tion al structure that
is similar to concentric hemispheres, only expressed in vertical planes,
