Fig. 3
From: The sensitivity of a honeybee colony to worker mortality depends on season and resource availability
Elasticity of colony growth rate to worker mortality as a function of brood survival. To estimate how colony growth responds to changes in adult worker mortality, we calculated the elasticity for six parameters: age-independent forager mortality (γf), age-dependent forager mortality (αf), age-dependent increase in forager mortality (βf), age-independent nurse mortality (γn), age-dependent nurse mortality (αn), age-dependent increase in nurse mortality (βn). To examine whether reduced reduced brood survival in winter influences the colony’s sensitivity to adult worker mortality, we re-calculated the elasticities for various values of brood survival (sb) with all other parameters set to winter levels (Additional file 1: Table S1). Open markers show results for forager mortality parameters, while solid markers show results for nurse mortality parameters. Note that bottom panel has a smaller scale than top panel to make lines more visible