Modeling the regulation of collective foraging in the honey bee Apis mellifera: a role for socially acquired memories

GONZALO DAMIÁN CORTI BIELSA; SERGIO DANIEL PISTONE; ENRIQUE CARLOS SEGURA; WALTER MARCELO FARINA

Huerta Grande, Córdoba, Argentina

Congreso; XXVIII CONGRESO ANUAL DE LA SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN NEUROCIENCIAS; 2013

Social insects colonies are complex systems with thousands of individuals organized in groups of differentiated behavior (division of labor), coordinated without centralized control by the transfer of information. It has been proposed theoretical approaches in order to understand how behaviors and social interactions are integrated giving place to collective phenomena. However, only recently and just a few works consider the role of learning and memory in these systems. Individuals perform different tasks as they age and foraging is among the last tasks that individuals carry out. Young individuals far from the nest entrance can access to chemosensory information about resources currently incoming, such as food odor, by extensive social interactions, like mouth-to-mouth contacts (trophallaxis). Experimental data show that individuals use long term associative memories of these experiences in earlier tasks for decision making when performing foraging tasks. Our model examines how this early experiences influence foraging behavior in an Apis mellifera colony. The use of this information biasing the behavior of individuals shows, in agreement with available data, that both in short and long term, individuals collecting known resources have more followers and receivers, with positive feedback of probability of recruitment displays , an issue that interferes with recruitment to new discovered food sources.