The 3-dimensional nest of the honey bee: organization, development, and impact on colony function

生物体的出现是进化压力的结果，同样的压力也适用于生物体建造的结构，如巢。当建成的结构具有刻板印象的外观时，这意味着结构本身起到了一定的作用(例如，鸟巢必须防止鸡蛋滚出来)。在群居昆虫中，巢对群落的生存、生长和繁殖至关重要，工蚁通常将它们的巢组织成不同的区域。在西方蜜蜂的巢中，工作人员通常在巢的中央孵化幼蜂，并在顶部储存蜂蜜。然而，除了对巢组织的一般描述外，我们对模式是如何启动并在群体发展过程中持续存在的理解很少。此外，虽然我们假设巢组织对蜂群功能很重要，但这一点没有得到明确的测试。为了执行这项工作，我们将开发新的方法来在野外测试菌落，并处理巢穴图像。了解蜂群如何自然地组织它们的巢，以及扰乱这种组织的影响，对于理解社会群体如何划分空间非常重要。蜜蜂也是现代农业景观中重要的传粉者，而我们的许多养蜂技术明显扰乱了蜂巢的组织，这种做法的影响迄今尚不清楚。了解蜜蜂是如何自然地组织它们的巢将有助于我们更好地管理这种主要的传粉者。该项目还将加强东南部养蜂人社区和那些在首届会议上研究蜜蜂的人之间的联系。它还开发和共享了进一步研究蜜蜂群体结构的新工具。群居昆虫是解决组织问题的大师，因为它们必须协调数千个个体来完成关键的生物学要求(生存、生长和繁殖)。这包括巢内资源的空间组织，大概是为了最大限度地提高群体性能。虽然蜜蜂巢组织的一般模式在超过3400万年的蜜蜂进化过程中得到了保存，表明了一种适应功能，但这一假说从未被检验过。事实上，即使在蜜蜂(蜜蜂)，我们最主要的农业传粉者，我们缺乏一个群体的生活中巢组织的三维描述。这项研究的目的是了解蜂巢是如何组织的，以及破坏蜂巢组织如何影响蜂群功能。在目标1中，我们将首次对蜜蜂群体随时间的生长、发育和繁殖进行三维描述。在目标2中，我们将测试实验性破坏三维巢组织的影响，以了解巢组织如何对群体功能做出贡献。在目标3中，我们将测试工蚁如何在不同的尺度上(全巢、每梳、每单元)生成和维护巢组织模式的潜在机制。为了支持这些目标，我们将开发两个方法创新：(1)一个现场就绪的摄影设备，和(2)一个梳子内容的自动分类器。综上所述，这一提议对生物模式、分散式建筑有影响，并可能挑战(或强化)形式跟随功能的基本假设。了解个体行为如何导致空间组织，将揭示进化如何建立集体系统，这些集体系统塑造他们的环境，以实现群体层面的目标。该项目由行为系统集群和既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An organism’s appearance is the result of evolutionary pressures, and these same pressures apply to the structures that organisms build, such as nests. When a built structure has a stereotypical appearance, this suggests that the structure itself serves a role (e.g., a bird’s nest must keep the eggs from rolling out). In social insects, nests are critical for colony survival, growth, and reproduction, and workers typically organize their nests into distinct regions. In nests of the Western honeybee, Apis mellifera, workers generally rear brood in the center of the nest, and store honey at the top. However, beyond general descriptions of nest organization, our understanding of how patterns are initiated, and persist over colony development, are poorly understood. Furthermore, while we assume that nest organization is important for colony function, this not been explicitly tested. To perform this work, we will develop new methods for assaying colonies in the field, and for processing nest images. Understanding how honeybee colonies naturally organize their nests, and the impact of disrupting this organization, is important for understanding how social groups partition space. Honeybees are also critical pollinators in the modern agricultural landscape, and many of our beekeeping techniques explicitly disrupt nest organization, the impacts of this practice are so far unknown. Knowing how honeybees naturally organize their nests will help us to better manage this premier pollinator. This project will also strengthen ties amongst the Southeastern community of beekeepers and those who research honeybees in an inaugural conference. It also develops and shares new tools for further research on honeybee colony structure. Social insects are masters of solving organizational problems because they must coordinate thousands of individuals to accomplish key biological imperatives (to survive, grow, and reproduce). This includes the spatial organization of resources within the nest, presumably to maximize colony performance. While general patterns of honeybee nest organization have been preserved in over 34 million years of Apis evolution, suggesting an adaptive function, this hypothesis has never been tested. Indeed, even in the honeybee (Apis mellifera), our premier agricultural pollinator, we lack a 3-dimensional description of nest organization over a colony’s life. The goal of this research is to understand how honeybee nests are organized, and how disrupting nest organization impacts colony function. In Aim 1, we will perform the first-ever 3-dimensional description of honeybee colony growth, development, and reproduction over time. In Aim 2, we will test the impact of experimentally disrupting 3-dimensional nest organization, to understand how nest organization contributes to colony function. In Aim 3, we will test potential mechanisms for how workers generate and maintain patterns of nest organization at different scales (whole-nest; per-comb; per-cell). To support these aims, we will develop two Methodological Innovations: (1) a field-ready photography rig, and (2) an automated classifier of comb contents. Together, this proposal has implications for biological patterning, decentralized architecture, and may challenge (or reinforce) the underlying assumption that form follows function. Understanding how individual behaviors lead to spatial organization will reveal how evolution builds collective systems that shape their environment to accomplish group-level goals. This project is jointly funded by the Behavioral Systems Cluster and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.