Fig. 1.

Effects of care-giver identity on body size, developmental duration, and feeding events. Young nests were manipulated such that the first cohort of female brood was either reared solely by a queen (QR nests) or by a small cohort of five workers (WR nests). a Body size as a function of care-giver identity; x-axis, length of the second marginal cell of the wing as a proxy for body size; y-axis, total number of bees; dashed lines represent the mean body sizes for each group (QR nests: mean ± s.e.m. 2.25 ± 0.03 mm; WR nests: 2.59 ± 0.02 mm). Care-giver identity impacted body size (Tukey’s post doc: QR versus WR: p < 0.001). b Developmental duration as a function of care-giver identity; x-axis, egg to adult development duration; y-axis, total number of bees; dashed lines represent the mean development durations for each group (QR nests: mean 27.75 ± 0.12 s.e.m. days; WR nests: mean 24.67 ± 0.06 s.e.m. days). Care-giver identity did not impact developmental durations. c Relationship between body size and developmental duration; dashed lines represent regression lines for each group and the solid line represents the regression line for all samples combined. There was a significant negative correlation between bee body size and developmental duration (rho = − 0.328, p < 0.001). d The total number of brood-feeding events exhibited, as a function of nest type; x-axis, day after larvae were first present in the nest (e.g., larval ages of 3 and 5 days); y-axis, number of brood-feeding events observed per day (mean ± s.e.m), for a total of 60 minutes of observation per day. Values are not corrected by the number of larvae in the nest, but these are assumed to be ~5 in all nests (based on Ref. 81 and S. H. W., unpublished data). Comparison performed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) groups, care-giver, (N.S.).