Mattila Heather R, Kernen Hannah G, Otis Gard W, Nguyen Lien T P, Pham Hanh D, Knight Olivia M, Phan Ngoc T
Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA.
School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Nov 10;8(11):211215. doi: 10.1098/rsos.211215. eCollection 2021 Nov.
Asian honeybees use an impressive array of strategies to protect nests from hornet attacks, although little is understood about how antipredator signals coordinate defences. We compared vibroacoustic signalling and defensive responses of colonies that were attacked by either the group-hunting giant hornet or the smaller, solitary-hunting hornet . colonies produced hisses, brief stop signals and longer pipes under hornet-free conditions. However, hornet-attack stimuli-and workers in particular-triggered dramatic increases in signalling rates within colonies. Soundscapes were cacophonous when predators were directly outside of nests, in part because of frenetic production of antipredator pipes, a previously undescribed signal. Antipredator pipes share acoustic traits with alarm shrieks, fear screams and panic calls of primates, birds and meerkats. Workers making antipredator pipes exposed their Nasonov gland, suggesting the potential for multimodal alarm signalling that warns nestmates about the presence of dangerous hornets and assembles workers for defence. Concurrent observations of nest entrances showed an increase in worker activities that support effective defences against giant hornets. workers flexibly employ a diverse alarm repertoire in response to attack attributes, mirroring features of sophisticated alarm calling in socially complex vertebrates.
亚洲蜜蜂运用一系列令人印象深刻的策略来保护蜂巢免受黄蜂攻击，尽管对于反捕食信号如何协调防御的了解甚少。我们比较了被群体捕猎的大黄蜂或较小的单独捕猎的黄蜂攻击的蜂群的振动声学信号和防御反应。在没有黄蜂的条件下，蜂群会发出嘶嘶声、短暂的停止信号和较长的笛声。然而，黄蜂攻击刺激——尤其是工蜂——会引发蜂群内信号传递速率的急剧增加。当捕食者直接在蜂巢外时，声景嘈杂，部分原因是反捕食笛声的疯狂产生，这是一种此前未被描述过的信号。反捕食笛声与灵长类动物、鸟类和狐獴的警报尖叫、恐惧呼喊和恐慌叫声具有声学特征。发出反捕食笛声的工蜂会露出纳氏腺，这表明存在多模态警报信号的可能性，即警告巢友危险黄蜂的存在并召集工蜂进行防御。对蜂巢入口的同时观察显示，工蜂的活动增加，这有助于对大黄蜂进行有效的防御。工蜂会根据攻击属性灵活运用多种警报方式，这反映了社会复杂的脊椎动物中复杂警报叫声的特征。
