Elekonich Michelle M, Jez Katarzyna, Ross Allan J, Robinson Gene E
Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
J Insect Physiol. 2003 Apr;49(4):359-66. doi: 10.1016/s0022-1910(03)00020-9.
Previous research has shown that juvenile hormone (JH) titers increase as adult worker honey bees age and treatments with JH, JH analogs and JH mimics induce precocious foraging. Larvae from genotypes exhibiting faster adult behavioral development had significantly higher levels of juvenile hormone during the 2nd and 3rd larval instar. It is known that highly increased JH during this period causes the totipotent female larvae to differentiate into a queen. We treated third instar larvae with JH to test the hypothesis that this time period may be a developmental critical period for organizational effects of JH on brain and behavior also in the worker caste, such that JH treatment at a lower level than required to produce queens will speed adult behavioral development in workers. Larval JH treatment did not influence adult worker behavioral development. However, it made pre-adult development more queen-like in two ways: treated larvae were capped sooner by adult bees, and emerged from pupation earlier. These results suggest that some aspects of honey bee behavioral development may be relatively insensitive to pre-adult perturbation. These results also suggest JH titer may be connected to cues perceived by the adult bees indicating larval readiness for pupation resulting in adult bee cell capping behavior.
先前的研究表明，随着成年工蜂年龄的增长，保幼激素（JH）滴度会升高，用JH、JH类似物和JH模拟物进行处理会诱导早熟觅食。在第二和第三龄幼虫期，表现出更快成年行为发育的基因型幼虫的保幼激素水平显著更高。众所周知，在此期间保幼激素的高度增加会使全能雌性幼虫分化为蜂王。我们用JH处理三龄幼虫，以检验这一假设，即这个时期可能也是JH对工蜂大脑和行为的组织效应的发育关键期，这样，以低于产生蜂王所需水平的JH进行处理将加速工蜂的成年行为发育。幼虫期JH处理并未影响成年工蜂的行为发育。然而，它在两个方面使成年前发育更像蜂王：处理过的幼虫被成年蜜蜂更早封盖，并且更早化蛹羽化。这些结果表明，蜜蜂行为发育的某些方面可能对成年前的干扰相对不敏感。这些结果还表明，保幼激素滴度可能与成年蜜蜂感知到的表明幼虫准备化蛹的线索有关，从而导致成年蜜蜂的封盖行为。
