Data from: The geometric framework for nutrition reveals interactions between protein and carbohydrate during larval growth in honey bees

In holometabolous insects, larval nutrition affects adult body size, a
life history trait with a profound influence on performance and fitness.
Individual nutritional components of larval diets are often complex and
may interact with one another, necessitating the use of a geometric
framework for elucidating nutritional effects. In the honey bee, Apis
mellifera, nurse bees provision food to developing larvae, directly
moderating growth rates and caste development. However, the eusocial
nature of honey bees makes nutritional studies challenging, because diet
components cannot be systematically manipulated in the hive. Using in
vitro rearing, we investigated the roles and interactions between
carbohydrate and protein content on larval survival, growth, and
development in A. mellifera. We applied a geometric framework to determine
how these two nutritional components interact across nine artificial
diets. Honey bees successfully completed larval development under a wide
range of protein and carbohydrate contents, with the medium protein (∼5%)
diet having the highest survival. Protein and carbohydrate both had
significant and non-linear effects on growth rate, with the highest growth
rates observed on a medium-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. Diet
composition did not have a statistically significant effect on development
time. These results confirm previous findings that protein and
carbohydrate content affect the growth of A. mellifera larvae. However,
this study identified an interaction between carbohydrate and protein
content that indicates a low-protein, high-carb diet has a negative effect
on larval growth and survival. These results imply that worker recruitment
in the hive would decline under low protein conditions, even when nectar
abundance or honey stores are sufficient.