ABSTRACT
Environmental changes during development have long-term effects on adult phenotypes in diverse organisms. Some of the effects play important roles in helping organisms adapt to different environments, such as insect polymorphism. Others, especially those resulting from an adverse developmental environment, have a negative effect on adult health and fitness. However, recent studies have shown that those phenotypes influenced by early environmental adversity have adaptive value under certain (anticipatory) conditions that are similar to the developmental environment, though evidence is mostly from morphological and behavioral observations and it is still rare at physiological and molecular levels. In the companion study, we applied a short-term starvation treatment to fifth instar honey bee larvae and measured changes in adult morphology, starvation resistance, hormonal and metabolic physiology and gene expression. Our results suggest that honey bees can adaptively respond to the predicted nutritional stress. In the present study, we further hypothesized that developmental starvation specifically improves the metabolic response of adult bees to starvation instead of globally affecting metabolism under well-fed conditions. Here, we produced adult honey bees that had experienced a short-term larval starvation, then we starved them for 12 h and monitored metabolic rate, blood sugar concentrations and metabolic reserves. We found that the bees that experienced larval starvation were able to shift to other fuels faster and better maintain stable blood sugar levels during starvation. However, developmental nutritional stress did not change metabolic rates or blood sugar levels in adult bees under normal conditions. Overall, our study provides further evidence that early larval starvation specifically improves the metabolic responses to adult starvation in honey bees.
Footnotes
Author contributions
Y.W. developed the general concept and approaches in this study and G.V.A., R.E.P. and J.F.H. provided helpful comments. O.K. prepared honey bee colonies and performed the starvation treatment on larvae. Y.W. and J.B.C. performed respiratory assays and Y.W. performed metabolic assays. Y.W. analyzed data and prepared the paper which J.B.C., R.E.P., G.V.A. and J.F.H. edited prior to submission.
Funding
This research was partly supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant [IOS 1122157] to J.F.H. and by the Research Council of Norway [180504,185306] and The PEW Charitable Trust to G.V.A.
