Group size influences maternal provisioning and compensatory larval growth in honeybees.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Han B
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10711493 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Group size influences maternal provisioning and compensatory larval growth in honeybees.
Han Bin B Amiri Esmaeil E Wei Qiaohong Q Tarpy David R DR Strand Micheline K MK Xu Shufa S Rueppell Olav O
iScience 20231123 12
Environmental variation selects for the adaptive plasticity of maternal provisioning. Even though developing honeybees find themselves in a protected colony environment, their reproductively specialized queens actively adjust their maternal investment, even among worker-destined eggs. However, the potentially adaptive consequences of this flexible provisioning strategy and their mechanistic basis are unknown. Under natural conditions, we find that the body size of larvae hatching from small eggs ...[more]
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