Meeting Abstract
Nutrition intake during the larval stage of holometabolous insects influences and fuels growth throughout metamorphosis. In social insects, differences in larval nutrition can regulate a profound reproductive division of labor. Provisioning by nurse bees differs between worker-destined and queen-destined larvae, and drives caste determination. Many studies have evaluated the dietary factors determining caste, but few consider how diet quantity might influence caste determination. We evaluated the influence of both dietary quantity and quality on caste determination by using the geometric framework. This powerful method gauges the interactions among nutritional components and allows us to evaluate if either specific dietary components, or multiple dietary interactions, determine caste in honey bees. Using in vitro rearing, we manipulated diet by varying both the macronutrient and quantity components. By following bees to eclosion, we were able to evaluate phenotypic differences between castes such as head, basistarsus and mandible dimensions along with eclosion weight and barbed stinger. Using untreated hive bees as a control, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to classify the experimental bees as queens, workers or intercastes. The results of this study will provide insights into the role of specific nutritional components in caste determination.
