Fat body morphology, but not body size, changes in forager bees of Scaptotrigona jujuyensis (Apidae: Meliponini) during foraging season

Abstract

The morphological variation of workers is a phenomenon related to a colony context. We have studied body size and fat body morphology in foragers of Scaptotrigona jujuyensis during different periods of the foraging season. In workers which forage at the start of season the number of oenocytes was lower than that of the remaining groups. Cytological analyses of trophocytes revealed that the granules differed in the staining pattern according to the period of sampling. The differences in the fat body of the workers may be due to the complexity and dynamic turnover of the vacuolar system of the trophocytes. Our results suggest that fat body morphology in adults of Scaptotrigona jujuyensis changes during foraging. The fat body might play a key role as an organ contributing to the success of a colony through its plastic changes in worker bees.