Making good choices with variable information: a stochastic model for nest-site selection by honeybees

Perdriau, Benjamin S; Myerscough, Mary R.

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0599

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…During this process a homeless swarm faces the challenge of identifying and selecting the best among several potential nest sites. Many empirical (Lindauer 1955;Seeley and Morse 1978;Seeley and Buhrman 2001;Seeley and Visscher 2004a) as well as theoretical studies (Myerscough 2003;Passino and Seeley 2006;Janson et al 2006;Perdriau and Myerscough 2007;List et al 2009) have investigated the principles underlying nest-site selection, as it provides valuable insights into how decentralised decisions can be achieved by relatively simple individuals. Nest-site selection is not only interesting from a biological perspective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciding on the wing: in-flight decision making and search space sampling in the red dwarf honeybee Apis florea

et al. 2011

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During reproductive swarming and seasonal migration, a honeybee swarm needs to locate and move to a new, suitable nest site. While the nest-site selection process in cavity-nesting species such as the European honeybee Apis mellifera is very precise with the swarm carefully selecting a single site, open-nesting species, such as Apis florea, lack such precision. These differences in precision in the nest-site selection process are thought to arise from the differing nest-site requirements of open-and cavity-nesting species. While A. florea can nest on almost any tree, A. mellifera is constrained by the scarcity of suitable nest sites. Here we show that imprecision in the nest-site selection process allows swarms to quickly reach a decision when many nest sites are available. In contrast, a very precise nestsite selection process slows down the decision-making process when nest sites are abundant.Nest-site selection in A. florea appears to be more similar to search-space sampling than to a decision-making process. Bees appear to scout the environment for general areas in which potential nest sites are abundant. Bees involved in searching the environment for suitable nest sites are also involved in guiding the swarm once the decision to depart has been made. Generally A. florea swarms exhibit a lack of consensus in the direction indicated by dancers prior to take-off. Because of this lack of consensus a swarm of A. florea will need to determine its exact direction of travel while in flight. We show that in the absence of directional consensus a swarm of bees can still be guided towards an area containing suitable nest sites provided directional dissent is not too great and nest sites are abundant. However, if the swarm needs to move to a very specific location (a single point in space), directional dissent should be avoided, resulting in a more lengthy decision-making process prior to departure. We further show that the guidance mechanism of bee swarms, so-called 'streaking', functions both when directional dissent is present and when it is absent, making it a more general mechanism of group movement than previously thought.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deciding on the wing: in-flight decision making and search space sampling in the red dwarf honeybee Apis florea

et al. 2011

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“…Other mathematical models of nest-site choice by honeybees are a differential equation model by Britton et al (2002), a matrix model by Myerscough (2003), another agent-based model by , and a density-dependent Markov process model by Perdriau & Myerscough (2007). While shedding light on several important aspects of the bees'decision process, none of these models exhibits both main characteristics of ours, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Independence and interdependence in collective decision making: an agent-based model of nest-site choice by honeybee swarms

List

Elsholtz

Seeley

2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

122

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Condorcet's jury theorem shows that when the members of a group have noisy but independent information about what is best for the group as a whole, majority decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. When voting is supplemented by communication, however, the resulting interdependencies between decision makers can strengthen or undermine this effect: they can facilitate information pooling, but also amplify errors. We consider an intriguing non-human case of independent information pooling combined with communication: the case of nest-site choice by honeybee (Apis mellifera) swarms. It is empirically well documented that when there are different nest sites that vary in quality, the bees usually choose the best one. We develop a new agent-based model of the bees' decision process and show that its remarkable reliability stems from a particular interplay of independence and interdependence between the bees.

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“…The standard problem examined in most modelling studies of the bees' decision-making process [15,22,28,29,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] and in some controlled experimental studies (e.g. [6]) is to give swarms a choice between two to six nest sites (but see [39] for a modelling study with a choice between 120 distinct nest sites).…”

Section: Simulations-the Possible Effects Of Scout Numbers On Decisiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Do small swarms have an advantage when house hunting? The effect of swarm size on nest-site selection by Apis mellifera

Schaerf

Makinson

Myerscough

et al. 2013

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Reproductive swarms of honeybees are faced with the problem of finding a good site to establish a new colony. We examined the potential effects of swarm size on the quality of nest-site choice through a combination of modelling and field experiments. We used an individual-based model to examine the effects of swarm size on decision accuracy under the assumption that the number of bees actively involved in the decision-making process (scouts) is an increasing function of swarm size. We found that the ability of a swarm to choose the best of two nest sites decreases as swarm size increases when there is some time-lag between discovering the sites, consistent with Janson & Beekman (Janson & Beekman 2007 Proceedings of European Conference on Complex Systems, pp. 204-211.). However, when simulated swarms were faced with a realistic problem of choosing between many nest sites discoverable at all times, larger swarms were more accurate in their decisions than smaller swarms owing to their ability to discover nest sites more rapidly. Our experimental fieldwork showed that large swarms invest a larger number of scouts into the decision-making process than smaller swarms. Preliminary analysis of waggle dances from experimental swarms also suggested that large swarms could indeed discover and advertise nest sites at a faster rate than small swarms.

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Making good choices with variable information: a stochastic model for nest-site selection by honeybees

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

Deciding on the wing: in-flight decision making and search space sampling in the red dwarf honeybee Apis florea

Deciding on the wing: in-flight decision making and search space sampling in the red dwarf honeybee Apis florea

Independence and interdependence in collective decision making: an agent-based model of nest-site choice by honeybee swarms

Do small swarms have an advantage when house hunting? The effect of swarm size on nest-site selection by Apis mellifera

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