RAPID:Impact of unpredictable population-wide disturbances on evolutionary processes -- honey bees in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

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Large-scale, unpredictable disturbances such as storms can alter the environment, eliminating or evolutionarily changing plant and animal life, with potentially long-lasting effects. The goal of this project is to understand the role of foraging and aggressive behavior in determining hurricane survival in the honey bees of Puerto Rico. Africanized bees invaded Puerto Rico in the 1950's, initially creating highly aggressive populations as has occurred elsewhere. Since their introduction, the Africanized bees of Puerto Rico have uniquely become less aggressive over time, as evidenced by a wealth of pre-hurricane genetic and behavioral data. This project addresses the hypothesis that storms, such as Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, select against more aggressive colonies and favor bees that invest more in foraging and food hoarding. The researchers will test this hypothesis by sampling the remaining post-hurricane populations and comparing them with the pre-hurricane data. RAPID funding will provide the opportunity to study both genetic and behavioral traits of survivors and their offspring within the months immediately following the storm. The study of a population's response subsequent to major environmental and anthropogenic disturbances is of importance to the understanding of processes that shape natural and agricultural ecosystems. This project will also support Puerto Rican students to maintain research productivity in a lab severely damaged by the hurricane. The genomes of bees from post-Hurricane Maria wild populations and domestic populations will be sequenced and analyzed to determine signatures of selection or genetic bottleneck by comparing them with pre-hurricane genotypes. Polymorphic markers across the genome will be used to test a larger number (1500) of specimens over a greater geographic area (i.e. Puerto Rico) to examine evolutionary trends and processes. Comparisons of genetics, genomics and behavior of pre- and post-hurricane, feral and domesticated populations will test hypotheses on role of large disturbances such as hurricanes or anthropogenic influences on reducing aggressive behavior in Africanized honey bees. Untangling the effects of chance and selective processes on honey bee genomes may identify a novel and general role of environmental disturbance in the evolution of aggressive behavior in colonial organisms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.