University of California San Diego, Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, 9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. 0116, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA.
Curr Biol. 2010 Feb 23;20(4):310-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.060. Epub 2010 Feb 11.
Decision making in superorganisms such as honey bee colonies often uses self-organizing behaviors, feedback loops that allow the colony to gather information from multiple individuals and achieve reliable and agile solutions. Honey bees use positive feedback from the waggle dance to allocate colony foraging effort. However, the use of negative feedback signals by superorganisms is poorly understood. I show that conspecific attacks at a food source lead to the production of stop signals, communication that was known to reduce waggle dancing and recruitment but lacked a clear natural trigger. Signalers preferentially targeted nestmates visiting the same food source, on the basis of its odor. During aggressive food competition, attack victims increased signal production by 43 fold. Foragers that attacked competitors or experienced no aggression did not alter signal production. Biting ambush predators also attack foragers at flowers. Simulated biting of foragers or exposure to bee alarm pheromone also elicited signaling (88-fold and 14-fold increases, respectively). This provides the first clear evidence of a negative feedback signal elicited by foraging peril to counteract the positive feedback of the waggle dance. As in intra- and intercellular communication, negative feedback may play an important, though currently underappreciated, role in self-organizing behaviors within superorganisms.
超个体（如蜜蜂群体）的决策通常使用自组织行为和反馈回路，这些行为和回路允许群体从多个个体收集信息，并实现可靠和灵活的解决方案。蜜蜂利用摇摆舞的正反馈来分配群体的觅食努力。然而，超个体使用负反馈信号的情况还了解甚少。我表明，在食物源上同种个体之间的攻击会导致停止信号的产生，这种信号已经被证明可以减少摇摆舞和招募行为，但缺乏明确的自然触发因素。信号发送者会根据气味，优先针对访问同一食物源的同巢伙伴发送信号。在激烈的食物竞争中，攻击者的信号产量增加了 43 倍。攻击竞争对手或没有受到攻击的觅食者不会改变信号的产生。捕食者也会攻击在花朵上的觅食者。模拟对觅食者的叮咬或接触蜜蜂报警信息素也会引发信号（分别增加 88 倍和 14 倍）。这提供了第一个明确的证据，表明觅食危险会引发负反馈信号，以抵消摇摆舞的正反馈。就像在细胞内和细胞间的通讯一样，负反馈可能在超个体的自组织行为中发挥着重要但目前尚未得到充分重视的作用。
