First published online September 19, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 3828-3836 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02450
Lifetime performance in foraging honeybees: behaviour and physiology
M.-P. Schippers1,
R. Dukas2,
R. W. Smith1,
J. Wang3,
K. Smolen1,4 and
G. B. McClelland1,*
1 Department of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1,
Canada
2 Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster
University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada
3 Department of Regional Centre for Mass Spectrometry, Department of
Chemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada
4 University of Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

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Fig. 1. The average (± s.e.m.) rate of food delivery as a function of
foraging experience of honeybees. The line is a quadratic regression fit. The
averages are based on individual averages of all bees (N=24) active
on each day.
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Fig. 2. Representative 2D electrophoresis protein gel from the thoracic section of
a mature forager honeybee. Proteins that either increased or decreased in
foragers, compared to hive bees, are indicated by numbers: 1, troponin T
10°: 2, translation elongation factor-1 ; 3, fructose
1,6-biphosphate aldolase; 4, unidentified protein; 5, Cu/Zn superoxide
dismutase (for further details see Table
1, and the extent of protein abundance change is illustrated in
Fig. 3). Additional proteins,
which were identified but did not show any change in expression, are indicated
by capital letters: A, enolase; B, actin; C, tropomyosin 2; D, CG6084-PA; E,
tropomyosin (Dermatophagoides farinae) (for further details see
Table 2).
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Fig. 3. Changes in normalized spot volume of proteins that were either increased or
decreased in mature forager compared to hive bees. Values are means ±
s.e.m.; *significant difference from hive bees (P values
are given in parentheses). N=9 forager and 9 hive bees. The numbers
next to the protein names refer to the numbers in
Fig. 2.
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Fig. 4. Mean enzyme activities (Vmax) of phosphofructokinase
(PFK), hexokinase (HK), citrate synthase (CS), pyruvate kinase (PK) and
cytochrome c oxidase (COx) at different life stages. Bars indicate
± s.e.m.; N=9-11 thoraxes per life stage; yf, young forager;
mf, mature forager; of, old forager.
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© The Company of Biologists Ltd 2006