Ontogeny of worker body size distribution in bumble bee (<i>Bombus impatiens</i>) colonies

Couvillon, Margaret J.; Jandt, Jennifer M.; Duong, Nhi

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2311.2010.01198.x

Cited by 64 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Both of these components may be strongly affected by learning, and one important limitation to the current study is that individual experience was not controlled, nor were individuals tracked over repeated trials to determine whether their performance changed with experience. While we do not believe that experience is likely to confound our results concerning body size, as the average size of bumblebee workers typically does not change over time (Couvillon et al, 2010) (so bees of different sizes should not differ systematically in age and experience level), this study cannot directly address the importance of learning for flight performance in cluttered environments. However, previous work clearly shows that on a larger spatial scale, bumblebees optimize flight routes (Lihoreau et al, 2012) and increase flight speed (Ohashi et al, 2008) with experience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Large bumblebee workers outperform small workers in nearly every task measured to date (Cnaani and Hefetz, 1994;Goulson et al, 2002;Kapustjanskij et al, 2007; although see Couvillon and Dornhaus, 2010), but spatially complex environments may provide an important context where small body size is favored (Foster and Cartar, 2011). Future work investigating whether the differences in transit time observed here translate to differential resource acquisition rates in cluttered environments would be of particular interest in understanding the ecological implications of our findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Bumblebee flight performance in cluttered environments: effects of obstacle orientation, body size and acceleration

Crall

Ravi

Mountcastle

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Locomotion through structurally complex environments is fundamental to the life history of most flying animals, and the costs associated with movement through clutter have important consequences for the ecology and evolution of volant taxa. However, few studies have directly investigated how flying animals navigate through cluttered environments, or examined which aspects of flight performance are most critical for this challenging task. Here, we examined how body size, acceleration and obstacle orientation affect the flight of bumblebees in an artificial, cluttered environment. Non-steady flight performance is often predicted to decrease with body size, as a result of a presumed reduction in acceleration capacity, but few empirical tests of this hypothesis have been performed in flying animals. We found that increased body size is associated with impaired flight performance (specifically transit time) in cluttered environments, but not with decreased peak accelerations. In addition, previous studies have shown that flying insects can produce higher accelerations along the lateral body axis, suggesting that if maneuvering is constrained by acceleration capacity, insects should perform better when maneuvering around objects laterally rather than vertically. Our data show that bumblebees do generate higher accelerations in the lateral direction, but we found no difference in their ability to pass through obstacle courses requiring lateral versus vertical maneuvering. In sum, our results suggest that acceleration capacity is not a primary determinant of flight performance in clutter, as is often assumed. Rather than being driven by the scaling of acceleration, we show that the reduced flight performance of larger bees in cluttered environments is driven by the allometry of both path sinuosity and mean flight speed. Specifically, differences in collision-avoidance behavior underlie much of the variation in flight performance across body size, with larger bees negotiating obstacles more cautiously. Thus, our results show that cluttered environments challenge the flight capacity of insects, but in surprising ways that emphasize the importance of behavioral and ecological context for understanding flight performance in complex environments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Bumblebee flight performance in cluttered environments: effects of obstacle orientation, body size and acceleration

Crall

Ravi

Mountcastle

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Morphological variation has been closely tied to task differentiation across many eusocial insects (e.g. Pie and Traniello, 2007;Couvillon, et al, 2010). However, many, particularly small-bodied species, are thought to be monomorphic, i.e., not vary in body size enough to affect task allocation (Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Differences in body size within species, or even within social insect colonies, may make certain individuals more suited at particular tasks other than foraging as well (Wilson, 1980a(Wilson, , 1984Keiser, et al, 2014). Some social insects have therefore evolved morphologically differing worker castes, the members of which are then allocated preferentially to different tasks (Pie and Traniello, 2007;Couvillon, et al, 2010;Jandt and Dornhaus, 2009). Most often, larger workers preferentially forage for resources, including food, water and potential nest locations (Wetterer, 1999;Jandt and Dornhaus, 2009;Wilson, 1980a;Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990), and are often more efficient at this task (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphological differences between extranidal and intranidal workers in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus, but no effect of body size on foraging distance

et al. 2014

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Most ant genera are thought to have monomorphic workers, indicating perhaps a high degree of flexibility in task allocation, and the well-studied genus Temnothorax is an example of this. However, considerable size variation may exist between individuals. In addition, though workers can show flexible behavior, it has been shown that individuals may consistently differ in their task profiles. Here we test whether body size variation among workers affects foraging behavior. Two main hypotheses were tested: first, whether larger ants forage at greater distance from the nest, and second, whether larger individuals show a higher propensity to work outside of the nest. Our results showed that ant body size does not significantly affect foraging distance. However, larger ants were more likely to be found outside the nest. Though Temnothorax ants are a common model system, this is the first study demonstrating task allocation based on body size, which is fixed in adults. Our study suggests that particularly small species may have to be examined carefully for body size variation before concluding that body size is uniform and therefore irrelevant for task allocation.

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“…Assignment of marked bees to one of the two heat exposure treatment groups was accomplished using the Random Number Generator function in Microsoft Excel 2007. Because bumble bee colonies have considerable variation in body size amongst workers (Alford, 1975;Couvillon et al, 2010) and body size influences division of labor in bumble bees (Goulson et al, 2002;Goulson, 2003;), workers' body sizes were measured postmortem by measuring thorax widths using a digital caliper to the nearest 0.1 mm (Neiko Tools, USA). Thorax width is a common measure for bumble bee body size.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ventilation response thresholds do not change with age or self-reinforcement in workers of the bumble bee Bombus impatiens

Duong

Dornhaus

2011

Insect. Soc.

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The response threshold model is a potential mechanism for task allocation in social insects, and it assumes that workers vary in the levels of task stimuli to which they respond. Furthermore, response thresholds of individual workers may change over time through selfreinforcement (experience), such that workers become more sensitive to task stimuli. However, in addition to self-reinforcement, aging is another process that occurs through time. Distinguishing whether response thresholds change within workers due to self-reinforcement or aging may give insight into the flexibility of this task allocation mechanism. Using a ventilation paradigm, we manipulated workers of Bombus impatiens to have either repeated or lack of exposures to increases in nest air temperature, thereby allowing us to manipulate experience and thus self-reinforcement. Nest air temperature was the task stimulus, and ventilation (fanning) was the behavioral response. We found that ventilation response thresholds do not decrease either with age or experience in workers of B. impatiens, contrary to what has been reported for B. terrestris workers (Weidenmüller, 2004). Instead, we found high levels of intra-individual variation in response thresholds. Our results also show that workers with lower average response thresholds respond to heating events with higher probability than those with higher ventilation thresholds. These results provide insight into the role of the response threshold framework for task allocation; we also discuss how response probabilities may play a role in task allocation among workers.

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Ontogeny of worker body size distribution in bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) colonies

Cited by 64 publications

References 61 publications

Bumblebee flight performance in cluttered environments: effects of obstacle orientation, body size and acceleration

Bumblebee flight performance in cluttered environments: effects of obstacle orientation, body size and acceleration

Morphological differences between extranidal and intranidal workers in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus, but no effect of body size on foraging distance

Ventilation response thresholds do not change with age or self-reinforcement in workers of the bumble bee Bombus impatiens

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