One cause of the evolutionary success of social insects is the division of labor among society members. In honey bees, workers perform the majority of tasks and their division of labor is mainly driven by age. Younger bees perform duties in the hive, such as nursing and comb building, while older bees fly out to forage. The transition between indoor hive bees and outdoor foragers is the most distinct switch in the behavioral development in honey bee workers. With the onset of foraging as a behavioral landmark, we tried to identify genomic regions with an influence on the speed of the behavioral development of honey bee workers. Selection experiments for high and low pollen hoarding led to two lines with early and late onset of foraging, respectively. Hybrid queens were generated from these two lines and back-crossed to both lines. The age of first foraging and foraging choice was determined for workers of both backcrosses. An extreme sub-sample of each set was subsequently used to identify genomic regions that influenced these parameters. AFLP- and sts-markers were used to construct a genomic map. This could be compared to previously published maps and used to locate putative QTLs.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)
Keywords: quantitative genetics, QTL-mapping
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