Dissertation Research: Mechanisms of Food Recruitment

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Abstract Proposal #9623336 P.I. Seeley and Nieh NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant IBN-9623336: Mechanisms of food recruitment in a stingless bee, Melipona panamica. Large Social insect colonies require a considerable food intake, yet usually live in competitive environments in which food sources are widely dispersed. Faced with these constraints, many highly social insects in the family Hymenoptera have evolved mechanisms to bring additional nestmates (recruits) to a newly discovered feed source. The mechanisms employed by stingless bees to communicate food location are diverse and fascinating, yet poorly understood. Like many ants, stingless bees in several genera directly follow foragers to feed source (piloting) or lay scent trails followed by recruits. Like honey bees, stingless bees in the genus Melipona may use sounds to communicate the distance to the food source. Recent data indicate that Melipona panamica foragers can recruit to a specific distance, direction and canopy level without using scent trails. Our goal is to understand how these bees recruit to a specific 3 dimensional set of coordinates. Recruiting foragers perform an intriguing sequence of spinning movements and pulsed sounds inside the nest. Foragers also appear to communicate the food source s direction outside the nest and deposit an unidentified pheromone at the food site for local orientation. The actual mechanisms may offer a novel solution to the problem of communicating food source location and will increase our understanding of complex mechanisms of communication in insect societies.