Honey bees increase social distancing when facing the ectoparasite
            <i>Varroa destructor</i>

Pusceddu, Michelina; Cini, Alessandro; Alberti, Simona; Salaris, Emanuele; Theodorou, Panagiotis; Floris, Ignazio; Satta, Alberto

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abj1398

Cited by 24 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…In contrast, post-introduction populations are much more dispersed across the landscape (Fig. 3B), reflecting movement strategies which lead to near-perpetual movement to avoid associations; a sort of dynamic social distancing (Pusceddu et al, 2021). This dispersed population structure means that most foragers encounter fewer than 10% of the population over their lifetime (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This change actually occurs over fewer generations than over which key aspects of animal culture and ecology, such as migration routes, are established through social learning (Jesmer et al, 2018; Cantor et al, 2021 b ). Current and expected cross-species transmissions of novel pathogens (Carlson et al, 2021; Pusceddu et al, 2021) should thus prompt concern that the evolutionary consequences of pathogen introduction could slow the transmission of, and erode, animal culture (Cantor et al, 2021 b ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Novel pathogen introduction rapidly alters evolved movement strategies, restructuring animal societies

Gupte

Albery

Gismann

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Animal social interactions are the outcomes of evolved strategies that integrate the costs and benefits of being sociable. Using a novel mechanistic, evolutionary, individual-based simulation model, we examine how animals balance the risk of pathogen transmission against the benefits of social information about resource patches, and how this determines the emergent structure of socio-spatial networks. We study a scenario in which a fitness-reducing infectious pathogen is introduced into a population which has initially evolved movement strategies in its absence. Within only a few generations, pathogen introduction provokes a rapid evolutionary shift in animals' social movement strategies, and the importance of social cues in movement decisions increases. Individuals undertake a dynamic social distancing approach, trading more movement (and less intake) for lower infection risk. Pathogen-adapted populations disperse more widely over the landscape, and thus have less clustered social networks than their pre-introduction, pathogen-naive ancestors. Running epidemiological simulations on these emergent social networks, we show that diseases do indeed spread more slowly through pathogen-adapted animal societies. Finally, the mix of post-introduction strategies is strongly influenced by a combination of landscape productivity, the usefulness of social information, and disease cost. Our model suggests that the introduction of an infectious pathogen into a population can trigger a rapid eco-evolutionary cascade, rapidly changing animals' social movement strategies, which alters movement decisions and encounters between individuals. In turn, this changes emergent social structures, and our model informs how such change can make populations more resilient to future disease outbreaks. Overall, we offer both a modelling framework and initial predictions for the evolutionary and ecological consequences of wildlife pathogen spillover scenarios.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel pathogen introduction rapidly alters evolved movement strategies, restructuring animal societies

Gupte

Albery

Gismann

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Such approaches facilitated the quantification of unintended effects mediated by agricultural pesticides (e.g., a commercial formulation containing the synthetic fungicides chlorothalonil and thiophanate-methyl) in A. mellifera colonies. Colonies that received pesticide sublethallytreated bees exhibited higher mortality levels, had lower swarm entropy and energy levels, and anticipated the collective activities for the peripheral hive areas, indicating a behavioral change possibly related to physiological alteration, which is suggested as a social behavioral strategy in honey bees [51,52].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In general, sublethal doses of pesticides in bees can act as physiological stressors, altering metabolic responses (e.g., oxidative stress), glandular (e.g., hypopharyngeal, fat body), and bee brain (e.g., JH, biogenic amines), which alter their behavior and decrease longevity [52]. On the other hand, the distancing behavior has a social character, in which the contaminated worker bees distance themselves from the brood area, representing the most susceptible individuals in the colony, migrating earlier than expected to the peripheral areas of the comb [59,60], thus preserving colony health [52]. Despite fungicides seeming to represent lower acute toxicity, recent studies have shown their abilities to unbalance bee health by modifying quercetin-dependent detoxification [57,58,61], which can detrimentally affect mitochondrial regeneration and ATP production.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian Multi-Targets Strategy to Track Apis mellifera Movements at Colony Level

Oliveira

Santos

Jumbo

et al. 2022

Insects

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Interactive movements of bees facilitate the division and organization of collective tasks, notably when they need to face internal or external environmental challenges. Here, we present a Bayesian and computational approach to track the movement of several honey bee, Apis mellifera, workers at colony level. We applied algorithms that combined tracking and Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), allowing measurements of entropy and Probability Distribution Function (PDF) of the motion of tracked organisms. We placed approximately 200 recently emerged and labeled bees inside an experimental colony, which consists of a mated queen, approximately 1000 bees, and a naturally occurring beehive background. Before release, labeled bees were fed for one hour with uncontaminated diets or diets containing a commercial mixture of synthetic fungicides (thiophanate-methyl and chlorothalonil). The colonies were filmed (12 min) at the 1st hour, 5th and 10th days after the bees’ release. Our results revealed that the algorithm tracked the labeled bees with great accuracy. Pesticide-contaminated colonies showed anticipated collective activities in peripheral hive areas, far from the brood area, and exhibited reduced swarm entropy and energy values when compared to uncontaminated colonies. Collectively, our approach opens novel possibilities to quantify and predict potential alterations mediated by pollutants (e.g., pesticides) at the bee colony-level.

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“…Humans are known for their capacity to isolate bearers of new pathogens. Strategies to reduce the contact between healthy and possibly infected individuals were recently observed in honey bees (Pusceddu et al, 2021 ). Even slime mould avoids conspecifics that face increased levels of (both biotic and abiotic) stress (Briard et al, 2020 ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Symptomic Mimicry Between SARS-CoV-2 and the Common Cold Complex

Tureček

Kleisner

2022

Biosemiotics

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The recent changes in COVID-19 symptoms suggest convergent evolution of respiratory diseases. This process is analogous to the emergence of animal mimetic complexes and complements previously identified types of mimicry. A novel pathogen might go unnoticed or insufficiently counteracted if it resembles a disease that the host already faced on multiple occasions, which creates a selective pressure towards a typical symptomic phonotype. In short, the reason why so many unrelated pathogens cause similar symptoms may correspond to the reasons that drove the evolution of the ‘warning’ wasp-like colouration in various insect species.

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Honey bees increase social distancing when facing the ectoparasite Varroa destructor

Abstract: Honey bees modify their social organization to hinder the spread of parasites within the colony.

Cited by 24 publications

References 65 publications

Novel pathogen introduction rapidly alters evolved movement strategies, restructuring animal societies

Novel pathogen introduction rapidly alters evolved movement strategies, restructuring animal societies

Bayesian Multi-Targets Strategy to Track Apis mellifera Movements at Colony Level

Symptomic Mimicry Between SARS-CoV-2 and the Common Cold Complex

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