Age-dependent hypopharyngeal gland size and protein content of stingless bee workers, Tetragonula pagdeni.

Eusocial insects, such as stingless bees (Meliponini), depend on division of labour, overlapping generations, and collaborative brood care to ensure the functionality and success of their colony. Female workers transition through a range of age-specific tasks during their lifespan (i.e., age-polyethism) and play a central role in the success of a colony. These age-specific tasks (e.g., brood care or foraging) often closely coincide with key physiological changes necessary to ensure optimal performance. However, our understanding of how nutrition, age, and polyethism may affect the development of such physiological traits in stingless bees remains limited. Here we show that pollen consumption and age-polyethism govern hypopharyngeal gland (HPG) acini size and protein content in Tetragonula pagdeni. By conducting a controlled laboratory experiment we monitored the effect of pollen consumption on worker bee survival as well as assessed how a pollen diet and age affected their HPG acini wid..., , , This PONE-D-24-15848_Complete data.xlsx file was generated on 2024-03-22 by Dr. Lars Straub

## GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: \"PONE-D-24-15848_Complete data.xlsx\".
2. Author Information
A. Principal Investigator Contact Information
Name: Lars Straub
Institution: Institute of Bee Health, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Address: Schwarzenburgstrasse 161, 3097 Liebefeld, Bern, Switzerland
Email: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])
3. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): Between January and May 2023
4. Geographic location of data collection: The study was performed at the King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Rayong Campus, Rayong, Thailand
5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: Support was provided by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, and the Vinetum Foundation to L.S. Further, thi...