Dissertation Research: Regulation of Pollen Collection by Honey Bee Colonies

高级群居昆虫的群体由数千个独立的个体组成，每个个体都独立行动，但整个群体作为一个连贯的单位发挥作用。这在群体食物采集、群体体温调节、筑巢和群体防御等集体活动中可以清楚地看到。蚁群的亚单位，即个体工蚁，以某种方式协调成一个组织良好的功能单位，但其整合机制在很大程度上仍是一个谜。Scott Camazine的博士论文将集中在一个精确组织的群体水平过程的例子：蜜蜂蛋白质食物花粉的收集。这项研究的目的是了解花粉的收集是如何被调节的。该方法将确定哪些等级的蜜蜂参与了采集花粉的过程，并确定这些蜜蜂之间关于蜂群对花粉需求的信息流。这些结果将阐明一个群体的觅食规则是如何从其组成成员的集体行为和相互作用中产生的。这项研究将提示如何操纵蜜蜂的花粉收集，以提高它们作为食物和种子作物传粉者的价值，并加强我们对生物亚单位（无论是分子，细胞还是生物体）如何紧密整合成功能组织整体的理解。

Colonies of advanced social insects consist of thousands of separate individuals each acting independently, yet the colony as a whole functions as a coherent unit. This is clearly seen in such collective activities as group food-gathering, colony thermoregulation, nest construction, and colony defense. The subunits of the colony, the individual workers, are somehow coordinated into a well-organized functional unit, but the integrative mechanisms remain largely a mystery. Scott Camazine's doctoral dissertation will focus on one example of a precisely organized colony-level process: the collection of the honey bees' protein food, pollen. The goal of the research is to understand how the collection of pollen is regulated. The approach will be to identify which castes of bees are involved in the pollen-foraging process, and to identify the flow of information among these bees concerning the colony's need for pollen. These results will elucidate how the regulation of a colony's foraging emerges from the collective behaviors and interactions of its constituent members. This research will both suggest how honey bees' pollen collection could be manipulated to enhance their value as pollinators of food and seed crops, and strengthen our understanding of how biological subunits--be they molecules, cells, or organisms--are tightly integrated into functionally organized wholes.