Fig. 2.

Plastic senescence in honey bee workers. A worker can switch between three phenotypes with distinct aging rates. Inter-individual variation in the timing of these shifts generates aging patterns where the physiological and chronological age of the bees are largely decoupled. (A) A worker that receives little or no transfers of jelly during the first days of adult life will bypass the nurse-stage and become a precocious forager. (B) During the favorable season, a worker will normally engage in nurse-activities before it initiates foraging. (C) Foragers in colonies that experience a dramatic loss of young nurse bees can revert to nursing. Diutinus workers initiate foraging (D) and nurse-activities (E) after the unfavorable season.