An exploration of the relationship between recruitment communication and foraging in stingless bees

Abstract

Social information is widely used in the animal kingdom and can be highly adaptive. In social insects, foragers can use social information to find food, avoid danger or choose a new nest site. Copying others allows individuals to obtain information without having to sample the environment. When foragers communicate information they will often only advertise high quality food sources, thereby filtering out less adaptive information. Stingless bees, a large pantropical group of highly eusocial bees, face intense inter- and intra-specific competition for limited resources, yet display disparate foraging strategies. Within the same environment there are species that communicate the location of food resources to nest-mates and species that do not. Our current understanding of why some species communicate foraging sites while others do not is limited. Studying freely foraging colonies of several co-existing stingless bee species in Brazil, we investigated if recruitment to specific food locations is linked to (1) the sugar content of forage, (2) the duration of foraging trips and (3) the variation in activity of a colony from one day to another and the variation in activity in a species over a day. We found that, contrary to our expectations, species with recruitment communication did not return with higher quality forage than species that do not recruit nestmates. Furthermore, foragers from recruiting species did not have shorter foraging trip durations than those from weakly-recruiting species. Given the intense inter- and intraspecific competition for resources in these environments, it may be that recruiting species favour food resources that can be monopolised by the colony rather than food sources that offer high-quality rewards.

Sociality, Communities and Morphological Features of Ants From Mid-Cretaceous Burmese Amber

“…the adaptation of the new form to different strata of biocenosis accompanied by the replacement of the stem taxa. In spite of specialization, ants of stem taxa cannot hold their positions, because, as has been shown, advanced social skills contribute to more efficient control of food resources (I’Anson Price et al, 2021). So, poneromorphs have not been displaced from the main positions, as the DSH suggests, they were always restricted to the same place (where they originated) as now, where the resource base keeps the existence of not large colonies of predators (occasionally specialized) with individual foraging and a small proportion of carbohydrates in the diet – geobionts, stratobionts, and herpetobionts in a rich (forest) warm-climate biocenosis.…”

Exploration of the Relationship Between the Quality of Higher Education and the Employability of College Students

“…The formulation of education plans is directly related to the quality of higher education. In order to improve the quality of higher education and the employability of college students, teachers need to pay attention to strengthening the optimization of education plans [15] . Firstly, the education plan needs to be adapted to social development.…”

“…Fourth, a teaching plan should be developed, and the selection of textbooks should comply with educational requirements and standards. Fifth, it is necessary to clarify that the selection of teaching methods should meet the standards of educational quality requirements [14] .…”

When should bees be flower constant? An agent-based model highlights the importance of social information and foraging conditions

“…Sugar concentration of collected nectar varies considerably from c. 10-70% (I’Anson Price, 2018; Seeley, 1986; Willmer, 2011). We chose an average sugar concentration of 35%, providing 5.814 J/μL.…”

“…For example, in an environment with an even number of high- and low-quality food sources, they collect 37.5μL per foraging trip. Sugar concentration of collected nectar varies considerably from c. 10-70% (I’Anson Price, 2018; Seeley, 1986; Willmer, 2011). We chose an average sugar concentration of 35%, providing 5.814 J/μL.…”