Institut für Biologie, Molecular Ecology Work Group, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Hoher Weg 4, Halle (Saale), Germany.
Behav Genet. 2011 Mar;41(2):323-8. doi: 10.1007/s10519-010-9382-9. Epub 2010 Jul 17.
Division of labour is a fundamental property of any social system. The specialization of different individuals in different tasks increases the overall work performance and efficiency. Specialization is thought to be the very foundation of the success of human societies but also in complex colonies of social insects. In human societies an advanced form of division of labour, especially since the industrialisation, is shift work, where individuals perform the same task but in subsequent cohorts in time. Although social insects can measure and are aware of time, shift work has not been documented in colonies of social insects so far. We observed foragers of two honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies (approximately 140 workers each) and genotyped them with microsatellite DNA markers. We determined paternity and assigned them to the various subfamilies in the colony to test whether there is genetic variance for shift work in foraging honeybees. We could show that the patriline identity of the foragers had a significant effect on foraging either in the morning or evening. Individual foragers differed in their preference for the "early" or "late" shift, and shift work indeed existed in the colony.
劳动分工是任何社会系统的基本属性。不同个体在不同任务上的专业化提高了整体工作绩效和效率。专业化被认为是人类社会成功的基础，也是复杂的社会性昆虫群体成功的基础。在人类社会中，一种先进的劳动分工形式，尤其是自工业化以来，是轮班工作，其中个体在不同的班次中执行相同的任务。尽管社会性昆虫可以测量和感知时间，但迄今为止，轮班工作尚未在社会性昆虫的群体中记录下来。我们观察了两个蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）群体的采集蜂（每个群体约 140 只），并用微卫星 DNA 标记对它们进行了基因分型。我们确定了亲代，并将它们分配到群体中的各个亚科中，以测试在采集蜜蜂中是否存在轮班工作的遗传差异。我们可以证明，采集蜂的父系身份对早晚的采集活动有显著影响。个体采集蜂在对“早班”或“晚班”的偏好上存在差异，而且轮班工作确实存在于群体中。
