Pacheco Junior Paulo, Teseo Serafino, Châline Nicolas, Lanhoso Henrique, da Costa Arley
Universidade Do Estado Do Amapá, Macapá, AP, Brazil.
Independent scholar, Pescara, Italy.
Naturwissenschaften. 2022 Apr 25;109(3):26. doi: 10.1007/s00114-022-01796-8.
Meliponine bees use chemical-based nestmate discrimination to protect their colonies from unrelated intruders. However, species from the Amazon basin are relatively poorly known from this perspective. Here, we investigated Melipona paraensis nestmate discrimination in different contexts (nests vs. neutral arenas), testing aggression in bees facing other bees varying in age and origin (same/different colony or a different kleptoparasitic meliponine species) or experimentally treated with odors from unrelated colonies. As expected, M. paraensis did not discriminate against callow non-nestmate workers with weak/undifferentiated chemical signatures. Workers specialized in nest defense aggressed intruders more often than non-specialized workers, but were less aggressive in neutral arenas than in the nest. Our study provides novel behavioral information relevant for social insect research and meliponiculture.
无刺蜂利用基于化学物质的同巢识别来保护它们的蜂群免受外来入侵者的侵害。然而，从这个角度来看，来自亚马逊盆地的物种相对鲜为人知。在这里，我们研究了帕拉无刺蜂在不同环境（蜂巢与中性场地）下的同巢识别情况，测试了蜜蜂面对不同年龄和来源（同一/不同蜂群或不同的盗寄生无刺蜂物种）的其他蜜蜂时的攻击性，或者用来自无关蜂群的气味进行实验处理后的攻击性。正如预期的那样，帕拉无刺蜂不会歧视具有微弱/未分化化学信号的未成熟非同巢工蜂。专门负责蜂巢防御的工蜂比非专门负责的工蜂更频繁地攻击入侵者，但在中性场地中比在蜂巢中攻击性更弱。我们的研究为社会昆虫研究和无刺蜂养殖提供了新的行为学信息。
