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Reproduction, social behavior, and aging trajectories in honeybee workers

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Abstract

While a negative correlation between reproduction and life span is commonly observed, specialized reproductive individuals outlive their non-reproductive nestmates in all eusocial species, including the honeybee, Apis mellifera (L). The consequences of reproduction for individual life expectancy can be studied directly by comparing reproductive and non-reproductive workers. We quantified the life span consequences of reproduction in honeybee workers by removal of the queen to trigger worker reproduction. Furthermore, we observed the social behavior of large cohorts of workers under experimental and control conditions to test for associations with individual life expectancy. Worker life expectancy was moderately increased by queen removal. Queenless colonies contained a few long-lived workers, and oviposition behavior was associated with a strong reduction in mortality risk, indicating that a reproductive role confers a significant survival advantage. This finding is further substantiated by an association between brood care behavior and worker longevity that depends on the social environment. In contrast, other in-hive activities, such as fanning, trophallaxis, and allogrooming did not consistently affect worker life expectancy. The influence of foraging varied among replicates. An earlier age of transitioning from in-hive tasks to outside foraging was always associated with shorter life spans, in accordance with previous studies. In sum, our studies quantify how individual mortality is affected by particular social roles and colony environments and demonstrate interactions between the two. The exceptional, positive association between reproduction and longevity in honeybees extends to within-caste plasticity, which may be exploited for mechanistic studies.

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Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the practical help of Tara McCray. We would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and help by the other members of the Social Insect Lab at UNCG. Financial support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation (grants: #0850465 and # 0926288) and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (#2010-65104-20533) to OR.

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Author notes

  1. Luke Dixon

    Present address: Life Science Department, Winston-Salem State University, 601 S. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, Winston-Salem, NC, 27110, USA

  2. Ryan Kuster

    Present address: Bioinformatics Graduate Program, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1000 Spring Garden Street, 312 Eberhart Building, Greensboro, NC, 27403, USA

    Luke Dixon, Ryan Kuster & Olav Rueppell

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  1. Luke Dixon
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Correspondence to Olav Rueppell.

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Authors Luke Dixon and Ryan Kuster contributed equally to this work.

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Dixon, L., Kuster, R. & Rueppell, O. Reproduction, social behavior, and aging trajectories in honeybee workers. AGE 36, 89–101 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-013-9546-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-013-9546-7

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