HENRY, TT; GIRAY, T; TURNER, T; Univ. of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas; Univ. of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras; Univ. of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas: Differences in Flight Muscle Contractile Proteins of the Worker Honeybee, Apis Mellifera, at Typical Colony Temperature Ranges

The worker honeybee,Apis mellifera,exhibits a particular characteristic of division of labor by age in the colony.Young workers perform jobs at the center of the hive where the temperature is 30-35°C.Older workers perform their jobs at the periphery and outside of the hive where the temperature is about 20-30°C.Young workers do not develop flight behavior during growth at temperatures of 25°C or less,whereas older workers which grew at warm temperatures and were introduced to temperatures of 10-25°C demonstrated flight behavior.We hypothesized that young workers need a temperatures of 30-35°C at the center of the hive for flight development or that they have preference for these temperatures for job performance near the brood(egg, pupae, and larvae).If the first part of our hypothesis is true,we predict that young workers growing at warm temperatures will have differences in flight muscle contractile proteins in comparison to those growing at cold temperatures.To test this prediction,we incubated workers from two different genetic backgrounds,African and European,at 25°C and 33°C for a time period of 17 days (foraging behavior begins at 16-21 d). One hundred workers of each genetic background were incubated at both temperatures.We sampled two workers from each group after 1,3,8,and 17 days.Our results show that there are quantitative and qualitative differences in the flight muscle contractile proteins of workers from different age groups and temperatures.Some flight muscle contractile proteins that were present in the workers incubated at 33°C were absent in the workers incubated at 25°C.In addition, 8 and 17-day old workers incubated at both temperatures have contractile proteins which are absent in the 1 and 3-day old workers.