Coping with nonrepairable body damage: effects of wing damage on foraging performance in bees

Nonrepairable body damage such as tooth and wing wear commonly occur in animals and can dramatically alter their behaviour. We critically examined the effects of nonrepairable damage in a model system that enabled us to separate the effects of damage from other correlated effects of senescence. Compared to sham controls, honeybees with 20% of their front wings trimmed continued to forage at similar rates and reduced their net rate of food …