Decoupling the effects of nutrition, age and behavioral caste on honey bee physiology and immunity

Miguel Corona; Belen Branchiccela; Shayne Madella; Yanping Chen; Jay Evans

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. . https://doi.org/10.1101/667931 doi: bioRxiv preprint Discussion 435 In this study, we used pollen-restricted colonies as a model to study the nutritional conditions 436 experienced in colonies within intensively cultivated agricultural areas. We complemented this 437 experimental model, by using triple TCSC for colony establishment, which allowed us to 438 uncouple the effects of nutrition, behavior and age in colonies of similar size, demography and 439 genetic background. This experimental setup also allowed us to explore the impact of these 440 variables on the expression of physiological genes involved in the nutritionally regulated division 441 of labor, immune genes and three major honey bee viruses. We showed that pollen deprivation 442 leads to a higher rate of new foragers, decreased brood production and caused important changes 443 in the expression of genes associated with physiological activity, immunity and titers of honey 444 bee viruses. This article is a US Government work. It is not subject to copyright under 17 USC 105 and is also made available for use under a CC0 license.