Departamento de Biociências, Universidade Federal Rural do Semi-Árido, Mossoró, RN, Brazil.
Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Laboratorio de Insectos Sociales, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2019 Feb;205(1):79-86. doi: 10.1007/s00359-018-1305-x. Epub 2018 Nov 21.
In social insects, the tuning of activity levels among different worker task groups, which constitutes a fundamental basis of colony organization, relies on the exchange of reliable information on the activity level of individuals. The underlying stimuli, however, have remained largely unexplored so far. In the present study, we describe low-frequency thoracic vibrations generated by honey bee workers (Apis mellifera) within the colony, whose velocity amplitudes and main frequency components significantly increased with the level of an individual's activity. The characteristics of these vibrations segregated three main activity level-groups: foragers, active hive bees, and inactive hive bees. Nectar foragers, moreover, modulated their low-frequency vibrations during trophallactic food unloading to nestmates according to the quality of the collected food. Owing to their clear association with the activity level of an individual and their potential perceptibility during direct contacts, these low-frequency thoracic vibrations are candidate stimuli for providing unambiguous local information on the motivational status of honey bee workers.
在社会性昆虫中，不同工蜂任务组之间的活动水平的调节，这构成了群体组织的基本基础，依赖于个体活动水平的可靠信息的交换。然而，到目前为止，潜在的刺激因素在很大程度上仍未得到探索。在本研究中，我们描述了在蜂巢内由蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）工蜂产生的低频胸部振动，其速度幅度和主要频率分量随着个体活动水平的增加而显著增加。这些振动的特征将三个主要的活动水平群体区分开来：觅食者、活跃的蜂巢蜜蜂和不活跃的蜂巢蜜蜂。此外，花蜜觅食者在根据收集的食物质量向巢内同伴进行营养物质转移时，会调节其低频振动。由于它们与个体的活动水平有明确的关联，并在直接接触期间具有潜在的可感知性，这些低频胸部振动是提供关于蜜蜂工蜂激励状态的明确局部信息的候选刺激物。
