National Centre for Biological Sciences - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru 560065, India.
Department of Apiculture, University of Agricultural Sciences - GKVK, Bengaluru 560065, India.
J Exp Biol. 2024 Jul 1;227(13). doi: 10.1242/jeb.247510. Epub 2024 Jul 3.
Social bees have evolved sophisticated communication systems to recruit nestmates to newly found food sources. As foraging ranges can vary from a few hundred meters to several kilometers depending on the environment or season, populations of social bee species living in different climate zones likely show specific adaptations in their recruitment communication. Accordingly, studies in the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, demonstrated that temperate populations exhibit shallower dance-calibration curves compared with tropical populations. Here, we report the first comparison of calibration curves for three Indian Apis cerana lineages: the tropical Apis indica, and the two montane Himalayan populations Apis cerana cerana (Himachal Pradesh) and Apis cerana kashmirensis (Jammu and Kashmir). We found that the colonies of the two montane A. cerana populations show dance-distance calibration curves with significantly shallower slopes than those of the tropical A. indica. Next, we transferred A. c. cerana colonies to Bangalore (∼ 2600 km away) to obtain calibration curves in the same location as A. indica. The common garden experiment confirmed this difference in slopes, implying that the lineages exhibit genetically fixed differences in dance-distance coding. However, the slopes of the calibration curves of the transferred A. c. cerana colonies were also significantly higher than those of the colonies tested in their original habitat, indicating an important effect of the environment. The differences in dance-distance coding between temperate and tropical A. cerana lineages resemble those described for Apis mellifera, suggesting that populations of both species independently evolved similar adaptations.
社会性蜜蜂进化出了复杂的通讯系统，以招募巢友前往新发现的食物源。由于觅食范围可能因环境或季节而异，从几百米到几公里不等，因此生活在不同气候带的社会性蜜蜂物种可能在其招募通讯方面表现出特定的适应性。因此，对西方蜜蜂 Apis mellifera 的研究表明，与热带种群相比，温带种群的舞蹈校准曲线较浅。在这里，我们首次比较了三种印度 Apis cerana 谱系的校准曲线：热带的 Apis indica，以及两个喜马拉雅山区的种群 Apis cerana cerana（喜马偕尔邦）和 Apis cerana kashmirensis（查谟和克什米尔）。我们发现，两个高山 A. cerana 种群的群体显示出的舞蹈-距离校准曲线斜率明显比热带的 A. indica 浅。接下来，我们将 A. c. cerana 殖民地转移到班加罗尔（约 2600 公里远），以在与 A. indica 相同的位置获得校准曲线。共同花园实验证实了这种斜率差异，这意味着这些谱系在舞蹈-距离编码方面表现出遗传固定的差异。然而，转移的 A. c. cerana 殖民地的校准曲线斜率也明显高于其在原始栖息地测试的殖民地，这表明环境的重要影响。温带和热带 A. cerana 谱系之间的舞蹈-距离编码差异与 Apis mellifera 描述的差异相似，这表明两个物种的种群都独立进化出了类似的适应性。
