Fig. 4.

IRS and TOR expression affect endocrine signaling during honey bee development. (A) Juvenile hormone (JH) content of early 5th instar larvae (S1 stage) of IRS^– (N=10), TOR^– (N=9), IRS^–/TOR^– (N=9) and control (N=7). Bars represent means ± s.e and different letters (a or b) refer to groups showing differences according to the post hoc Mann–Whitney U-tests (P<0.05). (B) The heatmap is based on unsupervised hierarchical clustering and displays morphological differences between individuals treated with JH and controls. Characteristics that were investigated included the presence (queen character) or absence (worker character) of a mandibular notch, the presence (worker character) or absence (queen character) of a structure on the hindleg (corbicula), mass in grams (queens weigh more than workers), time spent as a pupa (in this case, total time from larval defecation until adult eclosion), and ovariole number (a higher value is indicative of a queen phenotype). All values were z-transformed before generating the heatmap. Values increase from blue (low value) over black (medium value) to yellow (high value). (C) JH treatment rescues the queen phenotype in IRS^– and TOR^– larvae. Final adult phenotypes in the control, IRS^–+JH, IRS^–+Ac (acetone), TOR^–+JH and TOR^–+Ac treatment groups. Distance between tick marks, 1 cm.