DISSERTATION RESEARCH: How Worker Honey Bees Detect their Colony's Size: Testing the Comb Vibration and Chemical Composition Hypotheses

蜜蜂，生活作为一组有机体，形成一个合作单位：殖民地。殖民地和个人一样，有一个生长和发展的周期。当一个蚁群在不同的发育阶段之间过渡时，工蚁必须协调过渡。该项目的目标是了解非生殖性工蜂用来检测其群体发育阶段的线索，并协调生产更多工蜂和生产生殖性雄性和雌性（雄蜂和蜂王）之间的转换。这项研究将鼓励研究动物行为，化学生态学和电气工程的研究人员之间的合作。目前，养蜂人用来评估蜂群强度和发育阶段的方法是基于人类可以很容易确定的指标，但几乎可以肯定不是蜜蜂使用的指标。蜜蜂是全球农作物的主要授粉者，提供数十亿美元的授粉服务。通过确定蜜蜂用来检测自己蜂群发展的指标，这项研究将帮助养蜂人确定哪些蜂群需要管理，以及何时管理。 更好的群体管理反过来可以提高作物产量。这项研究的成果将通过养蜂课程分享。该项目还将培训行为生态学、化学生态学和工程学方面的研究生和本科生研究人员。描述性工作表明，社会性昆虫群体首先投资于工蚁（用于生长），然后转向生产生殖个体。理论工作已经表明了为什么殖民地会这样投资，但尚不清楚发展转型是如何协调的。研究人员最近发现，阈值数量的工人是诱导蜜蜂群体投资繁殖的触发因素，但工人如何检测这个繁殖阈值尚不清楚。本研究的目的是测试两个假设的机制，个别蜜蜂评估他们的殖民地？的大小：（1）蜂蜡梳振动，和（2）挥发性化学化合物。使用加速度计测量梳子振动，气相色谱法分析化合物，研究人员将确定这些线索是否可靠地随菌落大小而变化。然后，这些线索将被实验性地操纵，以确定工人使用哪一个（或哪些）来检测他们的殖民地高于生殖阈值。了解超有机体用来协调其发展过渡的线索将有助于了解进化如何在不同层次的生物组织（如个人和社会）中解决类似问题。

Honey bees, live as a group of organisms that form a cooperative unit: a colony. Colonies, like individuals, have a cycle of growth and development. When a colony transitions between developmental stages, the workers must coordinate the transition. The goal of this project is to understand the cues that non-reproductive worker honey bees use to detect the developmental stage of their colony and coordinate the switch between producing more workers and producing reproductive males and females (drones and queens). This research will encourage collaboration between researchers studying animal behavior, chemical ecology, and electrical engineering. Current methods used by beekeepers to assess the strength and developmental stage of a honey bee colony are based on metrics that humans can easily determine, but are almost certainly not those used by the bees. Honey bees are the primary pollinator of agricultural crops worldwide, providing billions of dollars of pollination services. By identifying the metrics that bees use to detect their own colony's development, this research will help beekeepers determine which colonies need to be managed, and when. Better colony management can in turn improve crop production. The outcomes of this research will be shared through beekeeping classes. This project will also train graduate and undergraduate researchers in behavioral ecology, chemical ecology and engineering.Descriptive work has shown that social insect colonies invest first in workers (for growth) and then switch to producing reproductive individuals. Theoretical work has shown why colonies invest as they do, but it is unknown how developmental transitions are coordinated. The researchers recently discovered that a threshold number of workers is the trigger that induces honey bee colonies to invest in reproduction, but how workers detect this reproductive threshold is unknown. The goal of this research is to test two hypotheses of the mechanism by which individual honey bees assess their colony?s size: (1) beeswax comb vibrations, and (2) volatile chemical compounds. Using accelerometers to measure comb vibrations, and gas chromatography to analyze chemical compounds, the researchers will determine whether these cues reliably change with colony size. The cues will then be experimentally manipulated, to determine which one(s) the workers use to detect that their colony is above the reproductive threshold. Understanding the cues that superorganisms use to coordinate their developmental transitions will give insights into how evolution has solved similar problems at different levels of biological organization such as individuals and societies.