Conflict and Cooperation in Honey Bees: Queen Piping and Afterswarming

蜜蜂的冲突与合作：蜂王鸣叫和蜂后蜂鸣

• 批准号: 9120639
• 负责人: P. Kirk Visscher
• 金额: $ 11.98万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1992
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1992-07-01 至 1996-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9120639&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Conflict; Cooperation; Honey; Bees; Queen

The high level of coordination shown by social insect colonies is of both economic and theoretical interest: The social events in honey bee colonies underlie bees' usefulness as pollinators and honey producers, and our ability to manage them successfully. At the same time, this coordination presents a special puzzle to evolutionary theory, since intra-colony conflict is expected in some circumstances. Genetic differences between individuals in colonies mean that any particular way of dividing the colony's resources among the reproductives will produce different genetic payoffs for different individuals, leading to conflicting interests between them. This study examines the production of swarms by honey bee colonies, with particular attention to the piping behavior of queen bees, a phenomenon long observed but never adequately explained. The study tests a hypothesis that worker bees, by manipulating the options available, redirect the interests of newly-reared queen bees into alignment with the workers' own interests. This turns a situation of conflicting benefits to different individuals into one of common, though lesser, benefits. The study tests the role of queen piping as communication of the factors that direct this realignment of interests. The research will contribute to a general theory of social behavior by testing how selection at the level of individuals can lead to traits at the level of groups, and how the barriers to evolution of highly cooperative behavior may be crossed. It will increase our understanding of honey bee reproductive behavior, which forms the basis for genetic management of bees.

群居昆虫群体表现出的高度协调具有经济和理论意义：蜜蜂群体中的社会事件是蜜蜂作为传粉者和蜂蜜生产者的有用性以及我们成功管理它们的能力的基础。同时，这种协调给进化论带来了一个特殊的难题，因为在某些情况下，群体内部的冲突是可以预料的。群体中个体之间的遗传差异意味着任何在繁殖体之间分配群体资源的特定方式都会为不同的个体产生不同的基因收益，导致它们之间的利益冲突。这项研究考察了蜂群的产生，特别关注蜂王的管状行为，这是一种长期观察到的现象，但从未得到充分解释。这项研究测试了一种假设，即工蜂通过操纵可用的选项，重新引导新饲养的蜂王的利益，使之与工蜂自己的利益保持一致。这将不同个人利益冲突的情况转变为共同的、尽管较小的利益。这项研究测试了皇后管道在沟通指导利益重组的因素方面所起的作用。这项研究将通过测试个人层面的选择如何导致群体层面的特征，以及如何跨越高度合作行为的进化障碍，来为社会行为的一般理论做出贡献。这将增加我们对蜜蜂繁殖行为的了解，这构成了蜜蜂遗传管理的基础。