Efecto de cambios ambientales en rasgos morfológicos y sensoriales asociados a la especialización de labores en la abeja de la miel Apis mellifera
Thesis
The division of labor is the foundation of social organization in insects. Eusociality is mainly characterized by, in addition to other factors, the division of labor castes. One of the factors that determine the allocation of self-organizing tasks is the response threshold model, which assumes that specialization depends on the variability in sensitivity to stimuli associated with performing a task. In the case of Apis mellifera, the collection of water, pollen and nectar mainly. The availability of these resources may vary over time due to changes in environmental variables. In this study it is proposed that in A. mellifera the specialization in collection tasks is related to differences in the size and number of morphological and sensory traits which are associated with changes in environmental variables over time. The results show that an increase in precipitation can cause the magnitudes of the morphological traits to decrease, while the sensory traits have a different behavior. On the other hand, bees specialized in collecting pollen and the pollen-liquid mixture, which are similar to each other, tend to have a larger body size and number of sensilla than liquid collectors.
