U.S.-Mexico: Evolution of Recruitment Communication in Bees

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0503834/0503468Cameron/NyeThis U.S.-Mexico award will support a collaborative planning visit and research by Dr. Sydney Cameron of the U. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and Dr. James Nieh of the U. of California-San Diego to Dr. Remy Vandame of the El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Tapachula, Mexico. The researchers intend to develop an international collaboration between two laboratories in the U.S. and one in Mexico to examine acoustical and pheromonal signals in recruitment communication in two different tribes of eusocial bees, Meliponini (stingless bees) and Bombini (Bombus. bumblebees). The investigators will bring complementary skills to address the problem of understanding the nature and evolution of the complex recruitment systems found in highly social bees, and how they may have evolved from simpler ancestral systems. The foreign counterpart Vandame brings a wealth of knowledge about the foraging ecology of stingless bees in Mexico, Nieh is an expert on stingless bee recruitment communication, and Cameron is a leader in molecular phylogenetics of social bees, and also specializes in the behavior of tropical bumblebees. Analysis of data will be distributed between the labs in Mexico and San Diego, using the 30 Terabyte data storage facility provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The researchers will each bring a graduate student to the collaborative effort and their experience in fostering communication and collaboration with scientific researchers and students from Mexico and Latin American countries will contribute to the broader impacts of the project.