Corpse Management in Social Insects

Sun, Qian; Zhou, Xuguo

doi:10.7150/ijbs.5781

Cited by 112 publications

(110 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Social segregation between age groups is thus reinforced, providing organisational immunity (Stroeymeyt, Casillas Perez, & Cremer, 2014). The results obtained in our H colonies are consistent with previous studies performed by Arathi et al (2000), and Sun & Zhou (2013). They found that workers performing diseaserisk tasks are usually highly specialised and have few interactions with other workers.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Individual precocity, temporal persistence, and task-specialization of hygienic bees from selected colonies of Apis mellifera

Lanzavecchia

Parreño

Liendo

et al. 2016

Journal of Apicultural Science

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A b s t r a c t Hygienic behaviour is a complex trait that gives Apis mellifera L. resistance against brood diseases. Variability in the expression of hygienic behaviour is evidenced at the colonylevel and is explained by the proportion and propensity of individual worker bees that engage in hygienic activities. We investigated the temporal performance and the dynamics of task-specialisation of individual bees over time, both in selected hygienic (H) and non-hygienic (NH) colonies. Then we evaluated the impact of these behavioural aspects on the colony performance. Bees that perform hygienic behaviour (hygienic bees) in our H colonies were more persistent in the hygienic activities throughout the days of the investigation. Such bees were more efficient in the removal of pin-killed brood than hygienic bees in the NH colonies. Hygienic bees in the H colonies were also specialist in the sub-tasks involved in the detection of odour stimulus from dead brood and continued to perform these activities throughout the days of the investigation (temporal persistence). Age-distribution of hygienic bees in the H colonies was asymmetrical, with a larger proportion of these bees performing hygienic activities early in life. At a colony-level, H showed higher efficiency compared to the NH colonies. The present results highlight the fact that individual behaviour may influence the collective dynamics of the hygienic behaviour in honeybee colonies. The results also note that the selection for highly hygienic colonies would result in changes in individual bees that improve the performance of the behaviour at the colony level. The relevance of task-partitioning and age-specialisation of hygienic bees on social immunity is discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Individual precocity, temporal persistence, and task-specialization of hygienic bees from selected colonies of Apis mellifera

Lanzavecchia

Parreño

Liendo

et al. 2016

Journal of Apicultural Science

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“…Highly valuable individuals appear to be protected against disease via interaction heterogeneities, which result in their social isolation from 'high-risk' individuals (i.e. old workers that have a high chance of having encountered pathogens and perform high disease-risk tasks such as foraging [2 ], waste management [35,36], undertaking [37] and hygienic behaviour [21]). There is good evidence that the queen and young workers are protected from potentially harmful external agents.…”

Section: Interaction Patterns and Individual Probability Of Infectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organisational immunity in social insects

Stroeymeyt

Casillas‐Pérez

Cremer

2014

Current Opinion in Insect Science

101

114

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“…Self-medication is widespread in animals (de Roode et al 2013), but social insects develop a plethora of other strategies to resist pathogens, including associations with symbiotic organisms (Chouvenc et al 2013;de Souza et al 2013). Corpse management is another essential adaptation to social life (Sun and Zhou 2013). The soldiers of many termite species produce potent defensive secretions that can have antifungal and antibacterial properties (Rosengaus et al 2000;Zhao et al 2004;Fuller 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication and Social Regulation in Termites

Bagnères

Hanus

2015

Social Recognition in Invertebrates

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Communication and social regulation are among the distinguishing features of termites: they are part of all basic aspects of termite biology, from ontogeny and caste differentiation to social behavior and cooperation. As in other highly social taxa, communication in termites predominantly relies on a complex network of chemical signals, which are complemented by vibration-based signals. In contrast to other social taxa, the role of visual cues is negligible. In this chapter, we review the recent literature on the different components that make up termite communication and social regulation systems by tracing termite evolution and examining the role played by different factors, such as sex and caste, and different behaviors, such as those related to defense, nestmate recognition, egg and brood care, foraging, and nest building, among others. The main characteristics of termites are compared to those of other social insects in the introduction. In the first section, we review the most important researches on termite communication and social regulation that are related to social activities in the basal phylogenetic lineages, and in the Termitidae (higher termites), the most advanced and diversified family. The abundant literature on the best studied genera, Reticulitermes, Coptotermes, and Heterotermes, which are considered for the purposes of this chapter to be intermediate termites, is reviewed and discussed separately in the second section. By using this approach, we seek to describe communication and social regulation systems in basal and primitive termites and illustrate how they have evolved to become more complex in intermediate and higher termites.

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Corpse Management in Social Insects

Cited by 112 publications

References 81 publications

Individual precocity, temporal persistence, and task-specialization of hygienic bees from selected colonies of Apis mellifera

Individual precocity, temporal persistence, and task-specialization of hygienic bees from selected colonies of Apis mellifera

Organisational immunity in social insects

Communication and Social Regulation in Termites

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