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Aging and demographic plasticity in response to experimental age structures in honeybees (Apis mellifera L)

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Abstract

Honeybee colonies are highly integrated functional units characterized by a pronounced division of labor. Division of labor among workers is mainly age-based, with younger individuals focusing on in-hive tasks and older workers performing the more hazardous foraging activities. Thus, experimental disruption of the age composition of the worker hive population is expected to have profound consequences for colony function. Adaptive demography theory predicts that the natural hive age composition represents a colony-level adaptation and thus results in optimal hive performance. Alternatively, the hive age composition may be an epiphenomenon, resulting from individual life history optimization. We addressed these predictions by comparing individual worker longevity and brood production in hives that were composed of a single-age cohort, two distinct age cohorts, and hives that had a continuous, natural age distribution. Four experimental replicates showed that colonies with a natural age composition did not consistently have a higher life expectancy and/or brood production than the single-cohort or double-cohort hives. Instead, a complex interplay of age structure, environmental conditions, colony size, brood production, and individual mortality emerged. A general tradeoff between worker life expectancy and colony productivity was apparent, and the transition from in-hive tasks to foraging was the most significant predictor of worker lifespan irrespective of the colony age structure. We conclude that the natural age structure of honeybee hives is not a colony-level adaptation. Furthermore, our results show that honeybees exhibit pronounced demographic plasticity in addition to behavioral plasticity to react to demographic disturbances of their societies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Kristen Ward for collecting the foraging data for the fourth experiment and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions to improve the manuscript. Financial support was provided by NIA (grant #PO1 AG22500), the American Federation for Aging Research, and the National Science Foundation (grant #0615502).

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Author notes

  1. Robyn Linford

    Present address: Bryan School of Business, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, 27403, USA

  2. Preston Gardner

    Present address: West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, Lewisburg, WV, 24901, USA

  3. Kari Fine

    Present address: College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Olav Rueppell, Robyn Linford, Preston Gardner, Jennifer Coleman & Kari Fine

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  1. Olav Rueppell
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  2. Robyn Linford
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  3. Preston Gardner
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  4. Jennifer Coleman
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  5. Kari Fine
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Correspondence to Olav Rueppell.

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Communicated by R. Moritz.

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Rueppell, O., Linford, R., Gardner, P. et al. Aging and demographic plasticity in response to experimental age structures in honeybees (Apis mellifera L). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62, 1621–1631 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0591-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0591-7

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