Learning to communicate: How do pheromones work in social and solitary bees and how did they evolve?

这个项目将结合行为生态学和分子方法来理解交流机制是如何工作的以及它们是如何进化的。这个项目将使用独居蜜蜂（如红梅森蜜蜂）和群居蜜蜂（如蜜蜂和大黄蜂）来解决这个问题。交流不仅是群居蜂群的核心功能，而且在独居蜜蜂的交配和其他种内交流中也是如此。通过实验室和实地研究的结合，该项目还将解决这些基本通信是否受到环境影响的干扰，如气候变化和杀虫剂暴露在独居和群居蜜蜂中。该项目直接解决了进化生物学中的一个关键问题，但也具有实际意义。蜜蜂被集中管理，为农作物授粉，每年为英国经济贡献6.51亿英镑，对我们的食物供应安全至关重要。了解如何控制害虫而不伤害有益昆虫，如传粉昆虫，是至关重要的。更多地了解群居昆虫和独居蜜蜂的功能将有助于实现这些目标。最终，希望这些关于这些重要昆虫的基本生物学知识也将有助于为保护英国和全球蜜蜂生物多样性的保护工作提供信息。

This project will combine behavioural ecology with molecular approaches to understand how mechanisms of communication work and how they evolved. This project will use solitary bees (e.g. the red mason bee Osmia bicornis) and social bees like honeybees and bumblebees to address this question.Communication is not only central to the function of social bee colonies but also for mating and other intra-species communication in solitary bees. Using a combination of laboratory and field studies this project will also address whether these fundamental communications are disrupted by environmental influences, like climate change and pesticide exposures in solitary and social bees.This project directly addresses a key question in evolutionary biology but also has practical importance. The honeybee is intensively managed for pollination of crops contributing £651 million to the British economy annually and is incredibly important for the security of our food supply. Understanding how to control pest species without harming beneficial insects, like pollinator species, is of paramount importance. Understanding more about how social insects and solitary bees function will assist with these goals. Ultimately it is hoped that this knowledge about the fundamental biology of these important insects will also help inform conservation efforts aimed at maintaining bee biodiversity in the UK and globally.