Mass provisioning is a form of

parental investment Parental investment, in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, is any parental expenditure (e.g. time, energy, resources) that benefits offspring.Clutton-Brock, T.H. 1991. ''The Evolution of Parental Care''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton ...

in which an adult insect, most commonly a

hymenoptera Hymenoptera is a large order (biology), order of insects, comprising the sawfly, sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are Par ...

n such as a

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

, stocks all the food for each of her offspring in a small chamber (a "cell") before she lays the egg. This behavior is common in both solitary and eusocial bees, though essentially absent in eusocial wasps.

Diversity

In bees, stored provisions typically consist of masses of mixed pollen and nectar, though a few species store floral oils. In a few cases, such as stingless bees and some sweat bees, the number of cells in a single nest can number in the hundreds to thousands, but more typically a nest contains either a single cell, or a small number (fewer than 10). In predatory wasps, the food is typically in the form of paralyzed or dead prey items; after digging the nest they quickly catch one or a few prey animals, bring them to the nest and lay eggs on them, seal the nest and leave. Some wasp lineages (e.g. Crabronidae) show variation, with some species practicing mass provisioning, while related species may bring back prey after the egg has hatched, and then seal the nest (such "delayed provisioning" is considered to be a stage in the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of progressive provisioning and thus of parental care in insects), or re-open the nest and add more prey items as the larva grows, which is genuine progressive provisioning. In 1958, Howard E. Evans published a study of the nesting behaviour of

Sphecini The Sphecidae are a cosmopolitan family of wasps of the suborder Apocrita that includes sand wasps, mud daubers, and other thread-waisted wasps. The name Sphecidae was formerly given to a much larger grouping of wasps. This was found to be p ...

digger wasps, showing a range of ways of stocking their nests. In ''

Prionyx ''Prionyx'' is a genus of wasps in the family Sphecidae. They are known to hunt and feed on grasshoppers. Behavior Prior to laying their eggs the female ''Prionyx'' stings a grasshopper causing paralysis. She will then bury the grasshopper in ...

'', several Nearctic and Palaearctic species catch a

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

, and then dig a nest for it, so there is one prey per nest. The nest consists of a single cell, and the egg is laid touching the coxa of a hind leg. In contrast, a Neotropical species, '' P. spinolae'', digs the nest first, creating multiple cells, and stocks each cell with 5–10 grasshoppers; the egg is laid on the underside of the thorax. No eusocial wasp species carries out mass provisioning in the strict sense, though the

vespid The Vespidae are a large (nearly 5000 species), diverse, cosmopolitan family of wasps, including nearly all the known eusocial wasps (such as ''Polistes fuscatus'', ''Vespa orientalis'', and ''Vespula germanica'') and many solitary wasps. Each ...

wasp genus ''

Brachygastra Honey wasps are species in the genus ''Brachygastra'' of the family Vespidae. ''Brachygastra'' comprises 17 species of social paper wasps. The ancestral species are thought to have diverged about 32 million years ago within diverse Amazonian rai ...

'' stores provisions of honey in its nests; the honey is used to supplement larval feeding (larvae are still fed masticated prey items, for protein), and also eaten by adults. The best-known examples from outside the Hymenoptera are

dung beetle Dung beetles are beetles that feed on feces. Some species of dung beetles can bury dung 250 times their own mass in one night. Many dung beetles, known as ''rollers'', roll dung into round balls, which are used as a food source or breeding cha ...

s, which typically provision with either leaves or dung. Once the provisions are in place and the egg is laid, the cell is sealed, to protect the developing brood.Wilson, 1971

Social behaviour

While mass provisioning is typical of some eusocial lineages, such as some sweat bees and all stingless bees, many other eusocial insects, such as ants and honey bees, instead practise

progressive provisioning Progressive provisioning is a term used in entomology to refer to a form of parental behavior in which an adult (most commonly a hymenopteran such as a bee or wasp) feeds its larvae directly after they have hatched, feeding each larva repeatedly u ...

, where the larvae are fed directly and continually during their development; as such, both highly eusocial and primitively eusocial lineages can perform either type of provisioning.

References

{{reflist, 30em

Sources

* Wilson, E.O. (1971) The Insect Societies. Harvard, Belknap Press. Ethology