IFIBYNE   05513
INSTITUTO DE FISIOLOGIA, BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Y NEUROCIENCIAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Transfer and propagation of resource information in honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies: building biological networks through social interactions.
Autor/es:
FARINA, WALTER M; GRÜTER, CHRISTOPH; DÍAZ, PAULA; BALBUENA, M SOL
Lugar:
San Diego, Estados Unidos
Reunión:
Congreso; Entomological Society of America 2007 Congress; 2007
Resumen:
The study of nectar foraging in honeybees provides an excellent opportunity to analyze social networks in a complex animal society. A key organizational principle of this activity without centralized control is that most colony members are involved in only a few interactions, while some others are involved in many interactions near the hive entrance (i.e., delivery and dancing area). If we consider that the individuals participating in at least one interaction are nodes in a dynamic network, those nodes with a high rate of social interactions, called hubs, would have a more important role for the propagation of foraging-related information at a social scale than peripheral members. To understand the information flow during nectar foraging we analyzed individual’s abilities to acquire chemosensory (gustatory and olfactory) information related to food within the natural context, the hive. Different operational components in this network are studied, the hub bees (employed foragers and processors) and the peripheral bees (nurses and newly emerged bees), as well as the mechanisms involved in this information transfer process. During nectar unloading with an incoming forager (mouth-to-mouth trophallaxis), food receivers can associatively learn the contingency between the food and its odor, which shows that trophallaxis plays a communicational role during nectar foraging. The gustatory information is also transferred by the same kind of interactions, since hive bees involving in food unloading modify their sugar sensitivity according to the quality of the food brought back by their donor-forager mates. Not only bees involved in nectar processing tasks acquire the food information via trophallaxis but also the recruits. The bees arriving at a feeding place for the first time learn the odor of the currently exploited food source within the hive. This odor acquisition is facilitated by dance maneuvers by foragers that brought back scented nectar in their crops. The presence of food odor modifies not only the distribution of hive mates around the dancer but also the trophallactic occurrence between dancers and hive mates. Thus, besides indicating the presence and location of a profitable resource, the dance amplifies the information transfer regarding floral odors within the colony. The olfactory memories formed in this social context can be retrieved even days after the acquisition and they are not restricted to hub bees. A rapid propagation of food-odor information within the hive also involves the youngest workers. These peripheral bees also form long-term memories about these floral types, which could be useful when these bees become nectar processors and new foragers. These results show that information about a food source can affect bees of all ages and sub-castes, rather than just a few hub bees. Thus, trophallactic networks within a bee colony form global information and the capability of bees of all ages to retrieve floral odor information for a long time prolongs its management.