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Wed, 4 Feb 2009 08:48:35 -0500 |
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>How do the bees recognize the eggs or larvae from their subfamily?
Aside from *whether* they do, this is how they could:
> Dufour's gland secretion of queens in Apis mellifera is normally caste
specific. In queenright workers it is composed of odd n alkanes, while in
queens it also possesses long chain esters. However, glandular expression is
plastic since queenless workers produce a queen-like secretion. Moreover, QR
gland incubated in vitro produced these esters, indicating that glandular
activity is regulated. We tested the hypothesis that the secretion is an egg
marking pheromone.
> Chemical analysis of the egg coating revealed minute amounts of the queen
esters, but neither queen secretion nor the synthetic esters were able to
protect worker-laid eggs from policing, refuting the hypothesis. Analysis of
abdominal tips further revealed that Dufour's egg secretion is also smeared
on the abodominal cuticle, suggesting that its presence on egg surface may
be due to passive contamination.
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