Aerial defense of the nest by workers of the stingless bee Trigona (Tetragonisca) angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Wittmann, Dieter

doi:10.1007/bf00295143

Cited by 61 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Additionally, we individually marked guards of both types using different combinations of dots of two colours (from seven colonies). Individual marking with acrylic colours was challenging because the bees are small (body length c. 5 mm ;Wittmann 1985), but was necessary to investigate possible changes in guarding behaviour. A colour mark weighed c. 0.2% of the body weight (unpublished data).…”

Section: Guarding Dura Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The guards that defend a bee nest usually stand on, near or in the nest entrance (Butler & Free 1952, Wittmann 1985. The stingless bee Tetragonsica angustula (Latreille) is unique in that it has two distinct types of guards (Kärcher & Ratnieks 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The other type, so far known only in this species, are hovering guards. Most hovering guards ("main group"; see Kärcher & Ratnieks 2009) hover within 20 cm of the entrance (see ig 1 in Wittmann 1985) facing the light path in front of the entrance (Wittmann 1985, Wittmann et al 1990, Kelber & Zeil 1997. A few guards hover 20-50cm from the entrance, to the right or left ("side groups") (Kärcher & Ratnieks 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The hovering guards force intruders to the ground by grasping legs and wings with their mandibles (Wittmann 1985, Bowden et al 1994.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Natural History of Nest Defence in a Stingless Bee, Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with Two Distinct Types of Entrance Guards

Grüter¹,

Kärcher²,

Ratnieks³

2011

Neotrop. entomol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The stingless bee Tetragonsica angustula (Latreille) is the only social bee known that has two different types of nest entrance guards. As in other stingless bees and the honey bee one type stands on, in or near the nest entrance. The second type, so far only known in T. angustula, hovers near the nest entrance. In order to gain further understanding of this unique situation we studied guarding behaviour in both types of guards. Using marked bees, we found that individual worker bees guarded for a long time, up to 20 days, relative to their short, average c. 21 day, lifespan. Relatively few, 33%, individually marked guards were seen performing both types of guarding. The others only acted as standing guards. The bees that did perform both types did so over similar periods of their life. Hovering bouts were 57 min long, interrupted by breaks inside the hive of a few minutes (3.3 ± 1.5 min). Standing bouts were slightly longer (74 min) and also interrupted by short breaks (7.82 ± 6.45 min). Human breath, mimicking a vertebrate intruder, caused the guards to retreat into the nest rather than to attack the intruder. Some colonies protected themselves against intruders by closing the entrance during the night (32% and 56% of colonies during two nights). In summary, our results indicate that nest entrance guarding in T. angustula involves division of labour between the two types, in which most guarding individuals only act as standing guards.

show abstract

Section: Guarding Dura Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The hovering guards force intruders to the ground by grasping legs and wings with their mandibles (Wittmann 1985, Bowden et al 1994.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Natural History of Nest Defence in a Stingless Bee, Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with Two Distinct Types of Entrance Guards

Grüter¹,

Kärcher²,

Ratnieks³

2011

Neotrop. entomol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Attacks of cleptobiotic robber bees like Lestrimelitta limao (Smith, 1863) are stopped by resin (Sakagami & Laroca 1963;Sakagami et al 1993). For aerial defense, the worker bees hover nearby the entrance of the nest (Wittmann 1985;Wittman et al 1990;Roubik 2006), their corbicula sometimes "loaded" with resin (personal observation) intercepting potential intruders.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Handling sticky resin by stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae)

Gastauer¹,

Campos²,

Wittmann³

2011

Rev. Bras. entomol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Soldier neural architecture is temporarily modality specialized but poorly predicted by repertoire size in the stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula

Baudier

Bennett

Barrett

et al. 2021

J of Comparative Neurology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individual heterogeneity within societies provides opportunities to test hypotheses about adaptive neural investment in the context of group cooperation. Here, we explore neural investment in defense specialist soldiers of the eusocial stingless bee (Tetragonisca angustula) which are age subspecialized on distinct defense tasks and have an overall higher lifetime task repertoire than other sterile workers within the colony. Consistent with predicted behavioral demands, soldiers had higher relative visual (optic lobe) investment than nonsoldiers but only during the period when they were performing the most visually demanding defense task (hovering guarding). As soldiers aged into the less visually demanding task of standing guarding this difference disappeared. Neural investment was otherwise similar across all colony members. Despite having larger task repertoires, soldiers had similar absolute brain size and the smaller relative brain size compared to other workers, meaning that lifetime task repertoire size was a poor predictor of brain size. Both high behavioral specialization in stable environmental conditions and reassignment across task groups during a crisis occur in T. angustula. The differences in neurobiology we report here are consistent with these specialized but flexible defense strategies. This work broadens our understanding of how neurobiology mediates age and morphological task specialization in highly cooperative societies.

show abstract

Aerial defense of the nest by workers of the stingless bee Trigona (Tetragonisca) angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Cited by 61 publications

References 5 publications

The Natural History of Nest Defence in a Stingless Bee, Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with Two Distinct Types of Entrance Guards

The Natural History of Nest Defence in a Stingless Bee, Tetragonisca angustula (Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with Two Distinct Types of Entrance Guards

Handling sticky resin by stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae)

Soldier neural architecture is temporarily modality specialized but poorly predicted by repertoire size in the stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About