Meeting Abstract
A Honeybee colony comprises thousands of sterile workers and one reproductive queen. While workers and queens are genetically analogous, they are morphometrically and physiologically disparate. Although all the individuals develop into workers unless queen development is necessary, each fertilized larvae has queen latency. This queen-worker divergence occurs when 3rd instar larvae receive a high quality diet of royal jelly. However, our recent work indicates diet quantity has a strong influence on caste in honeybees. A large amount of lower-quality diet can induce queen formation, but it is unknown whether queen induction under these conditions uses the same hormonal and cellular mechanism as queen induction at the third instar. The aim of this study is to determine the hormonal control and cellular mechanisms inducing queen formation under a range of diet quantities and qualities. In vitro rearing was used to control for both diet quantity and quality. We measured juvenile hormone titers and quantified transcript levels for Target of Rapmyacin (TOR), and Insulin Like-Peptides(IIS). Caste was confirmed using a principal component analysis (PCA) on multiple morphological indicators of caste. This research has implications for understanding both caste determination and queen quality.to confirm dietary quantity control of caste
