Meeting Abstract

51.6  Tuesday, Jan. 5  The cellular cost of highly metabolic behavior for aging and life histories. ELEKONICH, M.M.*; ROBERTS, S.P.; University of Nevada Las Vegas; Central Michigan University michelle.elekonich@unlv.edu

Cost-benefit models of behavior and its effects on life history traits typically measure cost in terms of whole animal energetic expenditure and loss of opportunities. We will highlight our work on the physiological, functional genomic and biochemical traits of honey bee flight muscle related to aerobic capacity and oxidative stress that suggests that direct cellular level costs also exist and differ between tissues. Young adult honey bees are flightless just after eclosion, but become one of nature’s great flying machines exhibiting the highest mass specific metabolic rates ever measured during a genetically-programmed but environmentally-sensitive transition from in-hive tasks to foraging in nature. Once they have been foraging for a short time, honey bee flight performance declines, and this senescence coincides with the loss of diurnally up-regulated antioxidant responses and diminished oxidative capacity in flight muscle. The cellular costs resulting from high temperatures and oxidative stress in flight muscle cells appears to hasten functional senescence and thus limit lifespan.