CAREER: Organization of Social Structure and its Influence on Transmission Dynamics in a Honeybee Colony

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Just like any other large social group, the honeybee colony critically relies on an efficient transfer of material and information among individuals. The interaction network which makes this possible is, however, also open to exploitation by pathogens or other harmful agents which can rapidly spread and infect the large number of available hosts, posing a serious challenge for the group. In a honeybee colony, the task based separation of individuals into behaviorally and spatially distinct subsets offers a potential mechanism by which the colony can resist the spread of an infectious pathogen and understanding its details can thus provide important insights into how the organizational structure of a social group can influence the transmission of an infectious disease. The objectives of this project are to understand the interaction network in a honeybee colony in terms of the behavioral and physiological mechanisms at the individual level, how the structural and functional properties of the network contribute to material flow within the colony, and how individual-level physiological and behavioral alterations could change the network structure and alter transmission patterns in response to infections. The project will also use inquiry-based investigations in animal behavior and disease ecology to get K-5 students, especially girls, involved in science and K-5 teachers motivated to develop science curriculum based on actual hands-on research. The project will widen the career options for undergraduates by involving them in classroom teaching and contributing to their training as scientists and educators. Understanding the influence of social structure on honeybee diseases makes this study timely to address the recent concern about the health of honeybees, a topic of national importance but also important for extending our still incipient knowledge of biological networks in general.