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A new study showcases the usefulness of systems theory and network analyses for understanding how dozens of stressors can act concomitantly to affect managed honey bee health. Interestingly, the most influential stressors are not those currently being addressed by beekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 80% of agricultural crops rely on insect pollination. Thus, pollinator biodiversity is critical for augmented plant yield and quality.Blow flies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) are acknowledged pollinators of several crops. However, there are many open questions regarding their importance in pollination ecology. For instance, there has not been a comprehensive assessment of pollen use by blow flies, and thus, it is unknown whether individuals visit few or many plant types per trip.At least one blow fly species (Lucilia sericata) can digest pollen and use the protein therein as an oogenic resource. However, it is unknown whether this is a commonly used strategy for protein acquisition, given that they are more commonly associated with faeces, carrion and myiasis.We surveyed the pollen found in blow fly guts to determine whether blow flies (a) consume pollen, and if so, which types of pollen; (b) exhibit species‐specific pollen use and (c) demonstrate sex‐specific pollen use.We collected blow flies from natural habitats around Central Texas from 2016 to 2019 and dissected their guts to look for the presence of pollen. We found widespread use of pollen from a variety of plants by six blow fly species and discovered a bias in the amount of pollen collected by female blow flies compared with males in some, but not all fly species.Pollen represents a relatively underappreciated aspect of blow fly biology, with the potential for several underappreciated ecological impacts ranging from disease ecology to plant diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an eye-tracking experiment to investigate consumer responses toward local Texas honey. Honey adulteration news was used as a treatment along with product attributes, such as a certified Texas honey seal, price, organic, and product reviews. The eye-tracking technology was applied to examine the effect of attribute-non-attendance to measure the treatment effects more robustly. The results show that honey adulteration information increases consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for some quality-related attributes. The results also show that negative product reviews have a much larger reduction in the magnitude of WTP than the increase produced by positive product reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural variation is essential for animals to adapt to different social and environmental conditions. The Kinship Theory of Intragenomic Conflict (KTIC) predicts that parent‐specific alleles can support different behavioural strategies to maximize allele fitness. Previous studies, including in honey bees (Apis mellifera), supported predictions of the KTIC for parent‐specific alleles to promote selfish behaviour. Here, we test the KTIC prediction that for altruism‐promoting genes (i.e. those that promote behaviours that support the reproductive fitness of kin), the allele with the higher altruism optimum should be selected to be expressed while the other is silenced. In honey bee colonies, workers act altruistically when tending to the queen by performing a 'retinue' behaviour, distributing the queen's mandibular pheromone (QMP) throughout the hive. Workers exposed to QMP do not activate their ovaries, ensuring they care for the queen's brood instead of competing to lay unfertilized eggs. Due to the haplodiploid genetics of honey bees, the KTIC predicts that response to QMP is favoured by the maternal genome. We report evidence for parent‐of‐origin effects on the retinue response behaviour, ovarian development and gene expression in brains of worker honey bees exposed to QMP, consistent with the KTIC. Additionally, we show enrichment for genes with parent‐of‐origin expression bias within gene regulatory networks associated with variation in bees' response to QMP. Our study demonstrates that intragenomic conflict can shape diverse social behaviours and influence expression patterns of single genes as well as gene networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is unclear whether stingless bees in the genus Melipona (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) can reliably encode the distance to a food source through recruitment sounds produced inside the nest, in part because the sound features correlated with distance also vary with food quality. We therefore trained marked foragers of two species, Melipona mandacaia and M. bicolor, to feeders at different distances and to different sucrose concentrations at the same distance. In both species, foragers successfully recruited to a rich 2.5-M food source and produced pulsed recruitment sounds in which pulse duration was significantly and positively correlated with distance to the rich food source. When returning from poorer food sources (0.6-1.5 M), foragers of both species decreased sound production, producing shorter sound pulses and longer sound interpulses than they did for 2.5 M food located at the same distance. Thus the temporal structure of M. mandacaia and M. bicolor recruitment sounds varies with distance and food quality. However, nestmates were not recruited by performances for poorer food sources (0.6-1.5 M), whose sucrose concentration was sufficiently low to affect recruitment sounds. Surprisingly, the interphase (the time between behavioral phases that communicate location) also increases with decreasing food quality in the closely related honeybees (Apis), suggesting a potential homology in the effect of food quality on the recruitment systems of Apis and Melipona. We explore the evolutionary implications of these similarities.

Objective: Cerebral metastasis (CM) in cervical cancer (CC) cases, although rare, results in high lethality rates. The present study aimed to assess CM incidence in a Brazilian reference CC center and evaluate the risk factors for CM development. Retrospective observational study of patients diagnosed with CC between 2010 and 2017. Methods: Cumulative CM incidence and incidence density were evaluated. Characteristics associated to CM development risks were identified using crude (cOR) or adjusted (aOR) odds ratios. Results: A total of 3,397 patients were included in this study. Patient age ranged from 18 to 101 years, with a mean age of 48.8±14.0. After a mean follow-up time of 3.2±2.1 years, 51 CM cases were identified, resulting in a cumulative incidence of 1.5% (95% confidence intervals [CI]=1.12-1.97) and an incidence density at the end of the 6th year of 27.4 per 1,000 women/ year. Advanced clinical stage (aOR=3.15; 95% CI=1.16-8.58; p=0.025), the presence of previous lung metastasis (aOR=4.04; 95% CI=1.82-8.94; p=0.001) and the adenocarcinoma (aOR=2.90; 95% CI=1.46-5.76; p=0.002), adenosquamous carcinoma (aOR=7.33; 95% CI=2.87--18.73; p<0.001), undifferentiated carcinoma (aOR=14.37; 95% CI=3.77-54.76; p<0.001) and neuroendocrine carcinoma (aOR=21.31; 95% CI=6.65-68.37, p<0.001) histological types were associated with a higher risk for CM development. CM risk was higher in the first years of follow-up, with no cases observed after the 6th year. Conclusion: CC patients in advanced clinical stages, displaying previous lung metastasis and non-squamous histological types are at high risk of developing CM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]