Eusociality In Bees Flashcards
What order is eusociality found in?
Hymenoptera
What does haplo-diploidy mean?
The females are diploid the males are haploid
How many chromosomes from the father will a female offspring get?
1 chromosome because the father only has one
What fraction are daughters genetically similar?
3/4
Why is it more advantageous for the workers to rear their sisters rather than have offspring?
Because the sisters are more genetically similar than if they were to have offspring
How often does the queen go on a mating flight?
Once and stores the sperm for the rest of her life
When will the queen lay a drone egg?
When the cell is big enough to accommodate a larger male larvae and when she needs to balance the sex ratio
What did Warton et al. (2007) do and what did he find?
Confined queens in cages away from the larger cells, after 4 days they were allowed to roam free and found the queen sought out larger cells and laid 3x more drone eggs
Give the development in days for each stage of development
Eggs: 3 days
Larvae and pre pupa: 8 days
Pupa: 9 days
What is the total development time from larvae to mature worker?
19.5-20 days
What happens when the queen ages?
She runs out of sperm and only produces drone eggs
What does the bee dance tell the other bees?
Information about the distance and direction of food sources
What type of bee does the waggle dance?
Forager
What season has the greatest increase of colony intake from dancing?
Winter
What does the bumble bee do instead of dancing?
It runs up and down the nest bringing home the newly discovered odour of the food source
What elements of the waggling phase communicates distance and direction?
The duration and angle of the dance
What happens when the resource is close to the hive?
The waggle phase is short, sometimes called round dances
What happens when forage is scarce?
The bees dance for less profitable resources
What chemical increases the likelihood of dancing?
Octopamine (OA)
What distance do the bees mainly perform round dances?
50m
What is used to encode the direction of the food source?
The direction of the sun
What is a bees judgement of distance largely based on?
Visual cues e.g landmarks
Who found that octopamine modulates honey bee dance behaviour?
Barron et al. (2006)
Who found that a tunnel can magnify a bees perception of distance?
Srinivasan et al. (2000)
Who found that the suns azimuth was equal to the angle of the run?
Karl Von Frisch
