Reduction in interaction efficiency disrupts collective thermoregulatory behavior in honeybees

Monday, November 11, 2024

11:06 AM – 11:18 AM MST

Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 224 A, PCC

Presenting Author(s)

Justine Bich Lien Nguyen

PhD Candidate
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Co-Author(s)

CC

Chelsea N. Cook

Assistant Professor
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Social insects engage in extensive collective behaviors to respond to an ever-changing environment. Western honeybees (Apis mellifera) are an example of such insects, with a robust historical documentation of their behaviors and physiologies. How workers produce large-scale, cohesive behaviors is an area of high research interest, due to their potential application to human designed algorithms and computing systems. Fanning is a thermoregulatory collective behavior performed by middle-aged honeybee workers called fanners to optimize colony temperatures for proper offspring development. Fanning is dependent on neurophysiological, environmental, and social contexts, but how honeybees work together to enact this critical thermal change in their environment remains unclear. We hypothesized that social interactions drove the fanning response in honeybees. Using an antibiotic, a well-established tool for understanding collective dynamics, to disrupt individual physiology, we demonstrate that 5-day exposure to antibiotics decreases fanning in honeybees. Using the automated tracking software ABCTracker to collect identify interactions, we show that antibiotic treatment lowers the number of interactions bees have, despite increasing average movement velocity. Our results contribute strong evidence that interactions between individuals drive the collective thermoregulatory fanning response in honeybees. This work emphasizes the importance of understanding the social mechanisms, especially pertaining to efficiency trade-offs, that underlie essential collective animal coordination, and potentially how current anthropogenic pollution could disrupt key dynamics necessary to regulate insect societies.