Inter‐individual variation in honey bee dance intensity correlates with expression of the foraging gene

Abstract

Individual behavioural differences in responding to the same stimuli is an integral part of division of labour in eusocial insect colonies. Amongst honey bee nectar foragers, individuals strongly differ in their sucrose responsiveness, which correlates with strong differences in behavioural decisions. In this study, we explored whether the mechanisms underlying the regulation of foraging are linked to inter-individual differences in the waggle dance activity of honey bee foragers. We first quantified the variation in dance activity amongst groups of foragers visiting an artificial feeder filled consecutively with different sucrose concentrations. We then determined, for these foragers, the sucrose responsiveness and the brain expression levels of three genes associated with food search and foraging; the foraging gene Amfor, octopamine receptor gene AmoctαR1 and insulin receptor AmInR-2. As expected, foragers showed large inter-individual differences in their dance activity, irrespective of the reward offered at the feeder. The sucrose responsiveness correlated positively with the intensity of the dance activity at the higher reward condition, with the more responsive foragers having a higher intensity of dancing. Out of the three genes tested, Amfor expression significantly correlated with dance activity, with more active dancers having lower expression levels. Our results show that dance and foraging behaviour in honey bees have similar mechanistic underpinnings and supports the hypothesis that the social communication behaviour of honey bees might have evolved by co-opting behavioural modules involved in food search and foraging in solitary insects.

Tandem running by foraging Pachycondyla striata workers in field conditions vary in response to food type, food distance, and environmental conditions

“…In ponerine ants, tactile interactions are common between nest mates ( Denis et al 2008 ; Yagound et al 2014 ; Kaur et al 2017 ). Although we did not elucidate the mechanisms, our results suggest that differences in the decision, success, and duration of tandem runs are not stochastic events, but are probably influenced by how the follower perceives the recruiting motivation of the leader, as occurs in dancing honey bees ( Núñez and Giurfa 1996 ; Hrncir et al 2011 ; George et al 2020 ).…”

Search behavior of individual foragers involves neurotransmitter systems characteristic for social scouting

“…In an earlier study, our lab reported that there are consistent long-term individual differences in the dance activity among foragers visiting the same feeder. Interestingly, these differences were, at least to some degree, dependent on the composition of the group (George et al, 2020). Furthermore, the individual variation in dance activity correlated with expression differences in the foraging gene ( Amfor ).…”

“…In addition, there is increasing evidence that foragers vary in the intensity of each behavioral module (Cook et. al., 2019;George et. al., 2020;George and Brockmann, 2019;Jeanson and Weidenmüller, 2014).…”

“…Among foragers, different behavioral phenotypes exist concerning the food or resource they collect (nectar, pollen, and water), or whether they search for new food sites (scouts) or get recruited to a known food site and continue to forage at that site till it is fully exploited (recruits) (Lindauer, 1952;zu Oettingen-Spielberg, 1949). Finally, recruits foraging at the same food source show consistent differences in their dance activity, suggesting a finer grained division of labor involving different behavioral phenotypes even among foragers performing the same task (George et al, 2020;George and Brockmann, 2019;Seeley, 1994). Although foragers can switch tasks, there is evidence that most of them temporarily show behavioral consistency.…”

Flupyradifurone reduces nectar consumption and foraging but does not alter honey bee recruitment dancing

“…Among those, LOC412217 is predicted to be a multidrug resistance-associated protein 1. Given that we were examining foraging behavior, we also checked for effects of FPF on the foraging genes Amfor, Amoctα-R1 and AmlnR-2 (George et al, 2019) but found no significant effects (P < 0.05).…”