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Date: | Sat, 13 Sep 1997 11:39:07 -0700 |
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We have had some exchange on the following topic:
>> But you also wrote that "bees consume only liquids". Now I actually did not
>> find that very contradictory, because brood is probably more liquidy than
>> pollen. I can imagine the bees breaking up the outer cuticle of the larva
>> and sucking up the juice much as a spider. (Do they haul out the larval
>> shell afterwards? I can imagine that it might be less work than breaking
>> it up into drinkable size pieces.)
Andy is basically correct, as I understand matters. When teaching my
entomology class through the past several decades, I stressed that a great
many insect species secrete a salivary juice onto the food. It thereby
becomes pre-digested before intake into the gut as a liquid.
Adrian
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 893-2838 (UCSB office)
Ecol., Evol., & Marine Biology (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX)
Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara (805) 963-8508 (home office & FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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* "Discovery is to see what everyone else has seen, *
* but to think what no one else has thought." *
* --- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi *
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