Neural and Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Embedding of Social Interactions

Abstract

Animals operate in complex environments, and salient social information is encoded in the nervous system and then processed to initiate adaptive behavior. This encoding involves biological embedding, the process by which social experience affects the brain to influence future behavior. Biological embedding is an important conceptual framework for understanding social decision-making in the brain, as it encompasses multiple levels of organization that regulate how information is encoded and used to modify behavior. The framework we emphasize here is that social stimuli provoke short-term changes in neural activity that lead to changes in gene expression on longer timescales. This process, simplified—neurons are for today and genes are for tomorrow—enables the assessment of the valence of a social interaction, an appropriate and rapid response, and subsequent modification of neural circuitry to change future behavioral inclinations in anticipation of environmental changes. We review recent research on the neural and molecular basis of biological embedding in the context of social interactions, with a special focus on the honeybee.

Social complexity, life-history and lineage influence the molecular basis of castes in vespid wasps

“…This could also mean that an individual with highly biased gene expression could distort the expression profile of the group it represents (queen or worker), and that by pooling several indviduals into a single replicate, we lose that information and thus cannot test for individual-level bias. Finally, our study focused on brain tissue only; although gene expression in the brain is dynamic and responsive to the social environment 37 , brain tissue tends to have a lower number of highly expressed genes relative to other tissues and slower rates of gene evolution 17 . Future studies might consider a wider range of tissue types (e.g 33 .)…”

“…1 ). Brain tissue is appropriate here, as it is the epicentre of behavioural regulation and is known to be highly dynamic and responsive to social interactions and social behaviour 37 ; moreover, behaviour is one of the defining features of castes and brain-associated gene expression studies in social insects 10 . We employ a machine-learning algorithm - support vector machines (SVMs) – along-side more conventional gene expression analyses to conduct fine-scale analysis of the molecular processes associated with caste, to test the hypothesis that there is a conserved genetic toolkit for social behaviour in species displaying different forms of sociality among putative proxy representatives of non-superorganismal (simple) to superorganismal (complex) species in vespid wasps (Aim1; Hypothesis 1).…”

Defensiveness measurement in honey bees (Apis mellifera) and brain expression of associated genes after noxious stimulus

“…Mechanisms underlying variation in readiness to defense may differ for constitutive differences and experience-dependent differences (rev. in Traniello and Robinson 2021). At the individual level, there are several common neurophysiological mechanisms related to aggression in vertebrates and invertebrates.…”

“…In the highly structured societies of bees, the individuals constantly modify their behavior in response to the social signals of their congeners (Traniello and Robinson 2021). For instance, only a subgroup of individuals shows aggressive defense of the colony, that is stinging and pursue of intruders (Rittschof, 2017).…”

Glyphosate impairs collective thermoregulation in bumblebees

“…Glyphosate may also disrupt some fundamental property of the social system. Individual behavior is embedded in and shaped by the social context ( 72 ), and numerous feedback processes integrate individual behavior into a collective, functional unit ( 73 ). In bumblebees, individual thermal response behavior is strongly modulated by the social environment ( 42 ).…”