mechanisms of communication in social insects

A lot of information-sharing in social insects is indirect; it may involve ‘blackboard architecture’ (depositing information in a central place) and/or cues (receivers extract information from behavior of knowledgeable individuals without explicit/evolved signals). Different species communicate different types of information (e.g. bumble bees communicate less information than honey bees).

Bumble bee dance

We demonstrated that successful bumble bee foragers returning to the nest do 3 things that communicate the presence and scent of food sources: deposit food in pots; run around like crazy (=’dance’); and produce a volatile pheromone from tergal glands.

Dornhaus, A., Chittka, L., 1999, ‘Evolutionary origins of bee dances’, Nature 401: 38 - pdf - tweet - first demonstration of ‘dance’ and scent learning based on honeypots in bumble bees (B. terrestris; no info about resource location communicated

Dornhaus, A., Chittka, L., 2001, ‘Food alert in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris): possible mechanisms and evolutionary implications’, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 50: 570-576 - pdf - first demonstration that volatile pheromone involved, and that influx in honeypots is sufficient to achieve recruitment

Dornhaus, A, Brockmann, A, Chittka, L 2003 ‘Bumble bees alert to food with pheromone from tergal gland’, Journal of Comparative Physiology A 189: 47-51 - pdf - volatile recruitment pheromone emitted during bumble bee ‘dance’ is produced in small glands on tergites

Dornhaus, A, Chittka, L 2004 ‘Information flow and regulation of foraging activity in bumble bees’, Apidologie 35: 183-192 - pdf - short review on bumble bee recruitment system

Dornhaus, A, Chittka, L 2005 ‘Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) store both food and information in honeypots’, Behavioral Ecology 16: 661-666 - pdf - potential foragers monitor both amount and concentration of nectar in honeypots; activation in response to influx is quality-dependent and affected by overall nectar stored, thus serving as ‘information center’

Granero, A M, Guerra Sanz, J M, Ega Gonzalez, F J, Martinez Vidal, J L, Dornhaus, A, Ghani, J, Serrano, A R, Chittka, L 2005 ‘Chemical compounds of the foraging recruitment pheromone in bumblebees’, Naturwissenschaften 92: 371-374 - pdf - recruitment pheromone found to consist of eucalyptol, ocimene and farnesol, with eucalyptol most active

Dornhaus, A, Cameron, S 2003 ‘A scientific note on food alert in Bombus transversalis’, Apidologie 34: 87-88 - pdf - B. transversalis appears to use the same recruitment strategies as B. terrestris

Chittka, L, Dornhaus, A 1999 ‘Comparisons in physiology and evolution, and why bees can do the things they do’, Ciencia al Dia International 2: No 2 - essay in the importance of considering phylogeny and interindividual variation in studying and explaining behavioral variation among species

Honey bees

Honey bees may in fact also use a volatile pheromone to alert other bees to waggle dances or to communicate the presence of successful foragers. And we did not find that giving-up-time was predicted by either nectar volume or waiting time.

Thom C, Dornhaus A 2007 ‘Preliminary report on the use of volatile compounds by foraging honey bees in the hive (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis)’ Entomologia generalis 29: 299-304 - pdf - honey bees appear to use a volatile pheromone to activate other foragers similar to bumble bees

Rivera M, Donaldson-Matasci M, Dornhaus A 2015 ‘Quitting time: When do honey bee foragers decide to stop foraging on natural resources?’, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 3: 50 - pdf - we do not find that either delay to or duration of trophallaxis predict when foragers give up on resources; contrary to claims that amount of nectar found on a foraging trip and social need for nectar, thought to correlate with trophallaxis duration and delay respectively, should determine this

Ants

Temnothorax ants, similar to bumble bees, used to be thought of as almost solitary foragers; we demonstrated that they can in fact make use of pheromone trails/marks left by others.

Cao TT, Dornhaus A 2012 ‘Ants use pheromone markings in emigrations to move closer to food-rich areas’, Insectes sociaux 59: 87-92 - pdf - Temnorthorax rugatulus ants are not entirely individualistic foragers, but instead appear to leave footprint pheromones’ these bias traffic/scouts in other contexts, e.g. emigration to a new nest