School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.
Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA.
Sci Rep. 2018 Dec 10;8(1):17764. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-35910-6.
Eusocial insects divide their labour so that individuals working inside the nest are affected by external conditions through a cascade of social interactions. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) transfer food and information via mouth-to-mouth social feeding, ie trophallaxis, a process known to be modulated by the rate of food flow at feeders and familiarity of food's scent. Little is understood about how aversive foraging conditions such as predation and con-specific competition affect trophallaxis. We hypothesized that aversive conditions have an impact on food transfer inside the colony. Here we explore the effect of foragers' aversive experience on downstream trophallaxis in a cage paradigm. Each cage contained one group of bees that was separated from feeders by mesh and allowed to feed only through trophallaxis, and another group that had access to feeders and self-specialized to either forage or distribute food. Our results show that aversive foraging conditions increase non-foragers' trophallaxis with bees restricted from feeder access when food is scented, and have the opposite effect when food is unscented. We discuss potential behavioural mechanisms and implications for the impact of aversive conditions such as malaise inducing toxins, predation, and con-specific competition.
社会性昆虫分工明确，这样一来，在巢内工作的个体就可以通过一系列社会互动来感知外部环境。蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）通过口对口的社会喂食来传递食物和信息，即蜜哺，这个过程已知会受到喂食器中食物流动速度和食物气味熟悉度的调节。对于捕食和同种竞争等不良觅食条件如何影响蜜哺，人们知之甚少。我们假设不良条件会对群体内部的食物传递产生影响。在这里，我们通过笼养实验来探索觅食者的不良经历对下游蜜哺的影响。每个笼子里都有一组蜜蜂，它们被网隔开，只能通过蜜哺来获得食物，另一组则可以接触到食物并专门用于觅食或分配食物。我们的结果表明，当食物有气味时，不良觅食条件会增加被限制接触喂食器的非觅食者的蜜哺行为，而当食物没有气味时，这种情况则会产生相反的效果。我们讨论了潜在的行为机制以及不良条件（如引起不适的毒素、捕食和同种竞争）的影响。
