Cell construction and egg-laying inTrigona nigra paupera with a note on the adaptive significance of oviposition behaviour of stingless bees
Tóm tắt
New brood cells of the cluster-building stingless bee,Trigona nigra paupera Provancher, are built in groups. The cells of each group develop into a batch formation when they are provided with larval food and eggs. Oviposition occurs approximately at 24-hour intervals. The cells of a batch are built in a “semi-synchronous” manner. Their provisioning during the very short “integrated oviposition process, IOP” (on the average 3 min 5 sec) is also “semi-synchronous”. The behaviour of the queen and the workers during IOP is described. The workers form a very distinct court around the queen exclusively just before IOP. The incessant diving into the cells by workers before and after the discharging of larval food probably has a signalling function for the queen. The queen's exposure of liquid between her mandibles during her final wait at one of the cells immediately before the workers discharge larval food is assumed to represent another form of queen-worker communication. The ultimate function of the typical rhythmicity of the oviposition behaviour of stingless bees is discussed. This rhythmicity is considered to be an adaptive trait, enhancing the fitness of the queen. We hypothesize that this behavioural feature increases the queen's control over cell provisioning by workers and hence over worker ovipositions. The fact that in many species the queen engages in worker-egg oophagy indicates the importance of oophagy for the expression of queen dominance. This mechanism for the control of male offspring produced by workers is discussed. Under certain conditions the queen may lose full control over laying workers. It is suggested that such limitation of the queen's control mechanism in fact contributes to the “proper” timing of seasonal male production.
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