Soldiers in a Stingless Bee
Soldiers in a Stingless Bee
复制标题
无刺蜜蜂中的士兵
DOI：
10.1086/684192
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发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
C. Grüter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Benedikt Hammel;A. Vollet;C. Menezes;F. Nascimento;W. Engels;C. Grüter
工人分化为形态上的亚种姓（例如，士兵）代表了一个重要的进化过渡，并被认为是改善社会昆虫的劳动分工。兵蚁出现在许多蚂蚁和白蚁物种中，它们在劳动力中占很小的比例。关于工人阶级进化的一个普遍假设是，士兵是行为专家。在这里，我们报告的第一个测试的“罕见的专家”的假设在一个真社会性蜜蜂。无刺蜂Tetragonisca angustula的殖民地由一小群形态分化的士兵保卫。与罕见的专家假设相反，我们发现士兵比其他工人工作更多（+34%-41%），执行更多种类的任务（+23%-34%），特别是在生命早期。我们的研究结果表明，在T。angustula，也就是说，他们执行了不成比例的大量工作。劳动分工是基于时间和身体种姓的结合，但士兵从一个任务到下一个任务的转换速度更快。我们讨论了为什么罕见的专家假设可能不成立的物种与工人分化程度适中。
The differentiation of workers into morphological subcastes (e.g., soldiers) represents an important evolutionary transition and is thought to improve division of labor in social insects. Soldiers occur in many ant and termite species, where they make up a small proportion of the workforce. A common assumption of worker caste evolution is that soldiers are behavioral specialists. Here, we report the first test of the “rare specialist” hypothesis in a eusocial bee. Colonies of the stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula are defended by a small group of morphologically differentiated soldiers. Contrary to the rare specialist hypothesis, we found that soldiers worked more (+34%–41%) and performed a greater variety of tasks (+23%–34%) than other workers, particularly early in life. Our results suggest a “rare elite” function of soldiers in T. angustula, that is, that they perform a disproportionately large amount of the work. Division of labor was based on a combination of temporal and physical castes, but soldiers transitioned faster from one task to the next. We discuss why the rare specialist assumption might not hold in species with a moderate degree of worker differentiation.
影响因子：
8.8
作者：
Dall SR;Bell AM;Bolnick DI;Ratnieks FL
通讯作者：
Ratnieks FL