Larval nutrition impacts survival to adulthood, body size and the allometric scaling of metabolic rate in adult honeybees

Abstract

Resting metabolic rate (RMR) is a fundamental physiological measure linked to numerous aspects of organismal function, including lifespan. Although dietary restriction in insects during larval growth/development affects adult RMR, the impact of the nutritional composition of larval diets (i.e. diet quality) on adult RMR has not been studied. Using in vitro rearing to control larval diet quality, we determined the effect of dietary protein and carbohydrate on honeybee survival to adulthood, time to eclosion, body mass/size and adult RMR. High carbohydrate larval diets increased survival to adulthood and time to eclosion compared with both low carbohydrate and high protein diets. Upon emergence, bees reared on the high protein diet were smaller and lighter than those reared on other diets, whilst those raised on the high carbohydrate diet varied more in body mass. Newly emerged adult bees reared on the high carbohydrate diet showed a significantly steeper increase in allometric scaling of RMR compared with those reared on other diets. This suggests that the nutritional composition of larval diets influences survival to adulthood, time to eclosion and the allometric scaling of RMR. Given that agricultural intensification and increasing urbanisation have led to a decrease in both forage availability and dietary diversity for bees, our results are critical to improving understanding of the impacts of poor developmental nutrition on bee growth/development and physiology.

Effect of non-essential amino acids (proline and glutamic acid) and sugar polyol (sorbitol) on brood of honey bees

“…Glutamic acid only increased the survival of the total bee brood when added to the standard diet. The larval diet composition of honey bees affects the developmental period and survival of immature bees to adults (Nicholls et al, 2021). Our results did not agree with earlier studies that showed higher mortalities of larvae (Helm et al, 2017) and adult (Pirk et al, 2010) bees when fed on a diet with higher protein concentrations.…”

Nutritional phenotype underlines the performance trade-offs of Drosophila suzukii on different fruit diets

“…Diet represents the most important environmental factor for animal survival, growth, reproduction, and various other physiological traits. In many oviparous insects, the developmental diet of immature stages (e.g., larvae) is determined by the mother's egg-laying site selection ( Björkman et al., 1997 ; Fortuna et al., 2013 ; Gripenberg et al., 2010 ), which could also shape their long-term performance and life-history phenotypes ( Langley-Evans, 2015 ; Nicholls et al., 2021 ; Stefana et al., 2017 ). The preference-performance (“mother knows best”) hypothesis assumes maternal oviposition preference evolves toward maximizing offspring fitness ( Jaenike, 1978 ).…”

Centris pallida(Hymenoptera: Apidae) male body size decreases across five decades

“…This may help explain the differences observed in male body size trends between C. pallida (where this is not the case) and the other studied species in Oliveira et al (2016). Low quantity or quality larval nutrition significantly reduces survival and impacts adult physiology (Lawson et al 2020, Nicholls et al 2021, resulting in reduced mating and foraging success (Muller et al 2015, Xie et al 2015. The negative fitness consequences of small body sizes may cause a species-specific lower bound on resource allocation per offspring.…”