Varroosis, a disease caused by the mite Varroa destructor Anderson and Treuman has killed hundreds of thousands of Apis mellifera L. colonies in various parts of the world. Nevertheless, the damage caused by this mite varies with the type of bee and climate conditions. Varroa causes little damage to Africanized bee colonies in Brazil, as the infestation rates are relatively stable and low. We e...

Introduction Primitively eusocial halictid bees are excellent systems to study the origin of eusociality, because all individuals have retained the ancestral ability to breed independently. In the sweat bee Halictus scabiosae, foundresses overwinter, establish nests and rear a first brood by mass-provisioning each offspring with pollen and nectar. The mothers may thus manipulate the phenotype o...

During colony growth, leaf-cutting ants enlarge their nests by excavating tunnels and chambers housing their fungus gardens and brood. Workers are expected to excavate new nest chambers at locations across the soil profile that offer suitable environmental conditions for brood and fungus rearing. It is an open question whether new chambers are excavated in advance, or will emerge around brood o...

American foulbrood (AFB) is one of the most destructive diseases of the honey bee. This infectious disease causes a great economic loss in beekeeping industry worldwide. This severe brood infection is caused by the spore forming bacterium, Paenibacillus larvae subspecies larvae White (formerly: Bacillus larvae subsp. larvae). AFB was not detected in Egypt till about two years, however the disea...

Male smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) provide sole parental care including frequent aggressive actions towards conspecifics and potential brood predators. Failure to defend the brood through continual vigilance results in predation reducing the number of offspring and promoting abandonment by the nesting male. However, little is known about how biochemical and endocrine factors and brood ...

The ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor and honey bee pathogenic viruses have been implicated in the recent demise of honey bee colonies. Several studies have shown that the combination of V. destructor and deformed wing virus (DWV) poses an especially serious threat to honey bee health. Mites transmitting virulent forms of DWV may cause fatal DWV infections in the developing bee, while pupae ...

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) society is characterized by a helper caste of essentially sterile female bees called workers. Workers show striking changes in lifespan that correlate with changes in colony demography. When rearing sibling sisters (brood), workers survive for 3-6 weeks. When brood rearing declines, worker lifespan is 20 weeks or longer. Insects can survive unfavorable periods on endog...

Honey bees (Apis melliferaL.) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) have been selectively bred for varroa-sensitive hygiene (VSH), which is the removal of pupae that are infested byVarroa destructor Anderson&Trueman fromcappedbrood cells. This hygienic behavior is a complex interactionof bees and brood inwhich brood cells are inspected, and then brood is either removed or recapped. Previous work has shown that...

Crèching behavior, or brood amalgamation, results in offspring being reared by adults other than their genetic parents. Although a variety of hypotheses have been proposed to explain this behavior, most assume either that brood amalgamation is accidental (i.e., nonselected) or that adoption of young is selected for because of social benefits to the young and/or adopting parents. We propose, ins...

June sucker, Chasmistes liorus, is an endangered lake sucker endemic to Utah Lake, Utah, USA. Over the last two decades, captive-raised June suckers have been stocked into Utah Lake to augment the wild population. However, it has become apparent that the fish stocked from captive stock may not always represent the typical June sucker morphology. To determine the utility of current captive brood...