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393 results for “honey bees”
A nutritionally complete pollen-replacing diet protects honey bee colonies during stressful commercial pollination: Requirement for isofucosterol
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Admixture in Africanized honey bees (Apis mellifera) from Panamá to San Diego, California (U.S.A.) honey bee dataset
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Data from: The effect of conspecific density on honey bee foraging behavior
Foraging honey bees (Apis mellifera) seem to use the presence of conspecific foragers as cues for flower quality. However, there is disagreement regarding how a conspecific cue is perceived by other foragers (enhancement or inhibition). Most studies manipulate the total number of bees foraging in an arena or the presence or absence of a bee on a flower and then observe the behavior of one forager in response to a single conspecific, which does not reflect natural foraging. We tested how a range of conspecifics on flowers affected on which flowers foraging honey bees landed. We trained students from a biology class for non-STEM majors to collect data and tested whether the number of conspecifics on flowers influences on which flower foragers land. We found that foragers land more frequently on flowers occupied by more conspecifics, which supports the hypothesis that conspecifics are cues for local enhancement. Our results increase our understanding of how honey bees forage once at a flower patch.
Supplementary material 1 from: Kitnya N, Prabhudev MV, Bhatta CP, Pham TH, Nidup T, Megu K, Chakravorty J, Brockmann A, Otis GW (2020) Geographical distribution of the giant honey bee Apis laboriosa Smith, 1871 (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 951: 67-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.951.49855
Collection locality information
Figure 1 from: Kitnya N, Prabhudev MV, Bhatta CP, Pham TH, Nidup T, Megu K, Chakravorty J, Brockmann A, Otis GW (2020) Geographical distribution of the giant honey bee Apis laboriosa Smith, 1871 (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 951: 67-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.951.49855
Figure 1 Apis laboriosa and Apis dorsata worker bees. A. laboriosa (left) has a completely dark abdomen and long golden thoracic hairs. A. dorsata (right) has several orange or yellow anterior abdominal segments and dark thoracic hairs. Details for the specimens photographed: A. laboriosa, collected by BA Underwood, Kaski District, Nepal, 1860 m, 8 v 1984 (Nest 6–8); A. dorsata, collected by GW Otis, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, 3.00 N, 101.68 E, 8 ii 1989. Scale bar: 1 cm.
Figure 3 from: Kitnya N, Prabhudev MV, Bhatta CP, Pham TH, Nidup T, Megu K, Chakravorty J, Brockmann A, Otis GW (2020) Geographical distribution of the giant honey bee Apis laboriosa Smith, 1871 (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 951: 67-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.951.49855
Figure 3 Elevational distribution of A. laboriosa records for Uttarakhand, Nepal, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. 94% of all records were found between 500–3500 m a.s.l.. The lowest occurrence of A. laboriosa was observed in Arunachal Pradesh (229 m a.s.l.), and the highest in Nepal (4267 m a.s.l.). Uttarakhand (N = 17; range: 1008–2743 m a.s.l.; mean: 1927 ±131 m), Nepal (N= 60; range: 800–4100 m a.s.l.; mean: 2036 ±103 m), Bhutan (N = 43; range: 631–3399 m a.s.l.; mean: 2077 ±124 m), Arunachal Pradesh (N = 17; range: 229–3649 m a.s.l.; mean: 1620 ±143 m).
Figure 2 from: Kitnya N, Prabhudev MV, Bhatta CP, Pham TH, Nidup T, Megu K, Chakravorty J, Brockmann A, Otis GW (2020) Geographical distribution of the giant honey bee Apis laboriosa Smith, 1871 (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 951: 67-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.951.49855
Figure 2 Geographical distribution of Apis laboriosa. Each circle indicates a locality at which a nest of A. laboriosa or workers foraging on flowers were found. The color indicates the source of information. Dark red: information collected by one or several of the authors; orange: photos published on websites; tan: information from published papers; and grey: oral reports by colleagues or local people. Scale bar: 250 km.
Figure 4 from: Kitnya N, Prabhudev MV, Bhatta CP, Pham TH, Nidup T, Megu K, Chakravorty J, Brockmann A, Otis GW (2020) Geographical distribution of the giant honey bee Apis laboriosa Smith, 1871 (Hymenoptera, Apidae). ZooKeys 951: 67-81. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.951.49855
Figure 4 Sites of sympatric occurrence of Apis laboriosa and Apis dorsata in Arunachal Pradesh, India. All five localities (black dots) where we found A. laboriosa and A. dorsata foraging together were below 1500 m a.s.l. (1) West Kameng District, Nag Mandir, 27.203N, 92.561E, 1164 m a.s.l; (2) West Siang District, Tumbin, 28.456N, 94.684E, 356 m a.s.l; (3) Siang District, Modi, 28.487N, 95.087E, 534 m a.s.l; (4) Tirap District, Kala Pahar, 26.934N, 95.576E ,1470 m a.s.l; (5) Tutnyu, 26.962N, 95.631E, 1060 m a.s.l. Scale bar: 100 km.
Effects of Nosema ceranae (DISSOCIODIHAPLOPHASIDA: Nosematidae) and flupyradifurone on olfactory learning in honey bees, Apis mellifera (HYMENOPTERA: Apidae)
<p>The health of insect pollinators, particularly the honey bee, <em>Apis mellifera </em>(Linnaeus, 1758), is a major concern for agriculture and ecosystem health. In response to mounting evidence supporting the detrimental effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on pollinators, a novel “bee safe” butenolide compound, flupyradifurone (FPF) has been registered for agricultural use. Although FPF is not a neonicotinoid, like neonicotinoids, it is an excitotoxic nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist. In addition, <em>A. mellifera</em> faces threats from pathogens, such as the microsporidian endoparasite,<em> Nosema ceranae</em> (Fries et al., 1996). We therefore sought (1) to increase our understanding of the potential effects of FPF on honey bees by focusing on a crucial behavior, the ability to learn and remember an odor associated with a food reward, and (2) to test for a potential synergistic effect on such learning by exposure to FPF and infection with <em>N. ceranae. </em>We found little evidence that FPF significantly alters learning and memory at short-term field-realistic doses. However, at high doses and at chronic, field-realistic exposure, FPF did reduce learning and memory in an olfactory conditioning task. Infection with <em>N. ceranae</em> also reduced learning, but there was no synergy (no significant interaction) between<em> N. ceranae</em> and exposure to FPF. These results suggest the importance of continued studies on the chronic effects of FPF.</p>
Data from: Honey bees and neonicotinoid-treated corn seed: contamination, exposure, and effects
<p>Most corn (<i>Zea mays</i>) seeds planted in the US in recent years are coated with a seed treatment containing neonicotinoid insecticides. Abrasion of the seed coating generates insecticide-laden planter dust that disperses through the landscape during corn planting and has resulted in many 'bee-kill' incidents in North America and Europe. We investigated the linkage between corn planting and honey bee colony success in a region dominated by corn agriculture. Over three years we consistently observed an increased presence of corn seed treatment insecticides in bee-collected pollen and elevated worker bee mortality during corn planting. Residues of seed treatment neonicotinoids, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, detected in pollen positively correlated with cornfield area surrounding the apiaries. Elevated worker mortality was also observed in experimental colonies fed field-collected pollen containing known concentrations of corn seed treatment insecticides. We monitored colony growth throughout the subsequent year in 2015 and found that colonies exposed to higher insecticide concentrations exhibited slower population growth during the month of corn planting, but demonstrated more rapid growth in the month following, though this difference may be related to forage availability. Exposure to seed treatment neonicotinoids during corn planting has clear short-term detrimental effects on honey bee colonies and may affect the viability of beekeeping operations that are dependent on maximizing colony size in the springtime.<span> </span></p>
Data from: The transcriptomic and evolutionary signature of social interactions regulating honey bee caste development
The caste fate of developing female honey bee larvae is strictly socially regulated by adult nurse workers. As a result of this social regulation, nurse-expressed genes as well as larval-expressed genes may affect caste expression and evolution. We used a novel transcriptomic approach to identify genes with putative direct and indirect effects on honey bee caste development, and we subsequently studied the relative rates of molecular evolution at these caste-associated genes. We experimentally induced the production of new queens by removing the current colony queen, and we used RNA sequencing to study the gene expression profiles of both developing larvae and their caregiving nurses before and after queen removal. By comparing the gene expression profiles of queen-destined versus worker-destined larvae as well as nurses observed feeding these two types of larvae, we identified larval and nurse genes associated with caste development. Of 950 differentially expressed genes associated with caste, 82% were expressed in larvae with putative direct effects on larval caste, and 18% were expressed in nurses with putative indirect effects on caste. Estimated selection coefficients suggest that both nurse and larval genes putatively associated with caste are rapidly evolving, especially those genes associated with worker development. Altogether, our results suggest that indirect effect genes play important roles in both the expression and evolution of socially influenced traits such as caste.
Data from: Nosema ceranae can infect honey bee larvae and reduces subsequent adult longevity
Nosema ceranae causes a widespread disease that reduces honey bee health but is only thought to infect adult honey bees, not larvae, a critical life stage. We reared honey bee (Apis mellifera) larvae in vitro and provide the first demonstration that N. ceranae can infect larvae and decrease subsequent adult longevity. We exposed three-day-old larvae to a single dose of 40,000 (40K), 10,000 (10K), zero (control), or 40K autoclaved (control) N. ceranae spores in larval food. Spores developed intracellularly in midgut cells at the pre-pupal stage (8 days after egg hatching) of 41% of bees exposed as larvae. We counted the number of N. ceranae spores in dissected bee midguts of pre-pupae and, in a separate group, upon adult death. Pre-pupae exposed to the 10K or 40K spore treatments as larvae had significantly elevated spore counts as compared to controls. Adults exposed as larvae had significantly elevated spore counts as compared to controls. Larval spore exposure decreased longevity: a 40K treatment decreased the age by which 75% of adult bees died by 28%. Unexpectedly, the low dose (10K) led to significantly greater infection (1.3 fold more spores and 1.5 fold more infected bees) than the high dose (40K) upon adult death. Differential immune activation may be involved if the higher dose triggered a stronger larval immune response that resulted in fewer adult spores but imposed a cost, reducing lifespan. The impact of N. ceranae on honey bee larval development and the larvae of naturally infected colonies therefore deserve further study.
Data from: A quantitative study of worker reproduction in queenright colonies of the Cape honey bee Apis mellifera capensis
Reproduction by workers is rare in honey bee colonies that have an active queen. By not producing their own offspring and preventing other workers from producing theirs, workers are thought to increase their inclusive fitness due to their higher average relatedness towards queen-produced male offspring compared with worker-produced male offspring. But there is one exception. Workers of the Cape honey bee Apis mellifera capensis are able to produce diploid female offspring via thelytokous parthenogenesis and thus produce clones of themselves. As a result, worker reproduction and tolerance towards worker-produced offspring is expected to be more permissive than in arrhenotokous (sub)species where worker offspring are male. Here we quantify the extent to which A. m. capensis workers contribute to reproduction in queenright colonies using microsatellite analyses of pre-emergent brood. We show that workers produced 10.2% of workers and 0.48% of drones. Most of the workers' contribution towards the production of new workers coincided with the colonies producing new queens during reproductive swarming.
Data from: Phantom alternatives influence food preferences in the eastern honey bee Apis cerana
1. Most models of animal choice behaviour assume that desirable but unavailable options, such as a high quality, but inhabited nest site, do not influence an individual's preferences for the remaining options. However, experiments suggest that in mammals such 'phantom' alternatives can alter, and even reverse, an individual's preferences for other items in a choice set. 2. Here we investigate the effect of phantom alternatives on feeder preferences in the eastern honey bee, Apis cerana. 3. First, we tested the effects of unattractive and attractive phantom by presenting individual bees with either a binary choice set containing two feeders that differed strongly in two qualities, but were equally preferred overall ('the target' and 'the competitor'), or a trinary choice set containing the target, the competitor and one of two phantom types (unattractive and attractive). Second, we determined whether phantoms change preferences between the competitor and target by increasing preference towards or away from the phantom-similar available choice. 4. Attractive phantoms consistently changed individual bee preferences in favour of the phantom-similar choice. 5. Our study shows that the phantom alternative effect is not limited to mammals. Moreover, the phantom effect can shift individual preference in a consistent and predictable way. Our results highlight the importance of considering the potential for phantom effects when considering the foraging behaviour of animals in natural environments.
Data from: Honey bees modulate their olfactory learning in the presence of hornet predators and alarm component
In Southeast Asia the native honey bee species Apis cerana is often attacked by hornets (Vespa velutina), mainly in the period from April to November. During the co-evolution of these two species honey bees have developed several strategies to defend themselves such as learning the odors of hornets and releasing alarm components to inform other mates. However, so far little is known about whether and how honey bees modulate their olfactory learning in the presence of the hornet predator and alarm components of honey bee itself. In the present study, we test for associative olfactory learning of A. cerana in the presence of predator odors, the alarm pheromone component isopentyl acetate (IPA), or a floral odor (hexanal) as a control. The results show that bees can detect live hornet odors, that there is almost no association between the innately aversive hornet odor and the appetitive stimulus sucrose, and that IPA is less well associated with an appetitive stimulus when compared with a floral odor. In order to imitate natural conditions, e.g. when bees are foraging on flowers and a predator shows up, or alarm pheromone is released by a captured mate, we tested combinations of the hornet odor and floral odor, or IPA and floral odor. Both of these combinations led to reduced learning scores. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the prey-predator system between A. cerana and V. velutina.
Data from: Petrol exhaust pollution impairs honey bee learning and memory
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) serve as important infochemicals, mediating several ecological interactions including herbivory and pollination. Atmospheric pollutants including traffic-related air pollution may impair the detection of VOCs used by insects in insect-plant interactions. We investigated the indirect effect of petrol exhaust pollution on olfactory learning and memory (short and long term) in honey bees. Using appetitive olfactory conditioning, we trained bees to learn one of four floral VOC profiles; linalool, dipentene, myrcene and geranium. VOCs were unpolluted or polluted with exhaust collected from a petrol generator. Exhaust emissions included concentrations of CO (246.07 + 17 ppm), NO (20.50 + 6.90 ppb) and NO2 (20.93 + 0.05 ppb) consistent with those typically encountered in urban areas and near roads. Once bees had learnt the training VOC, we tested whether they could recognise that VOC 1 hour, 24 hours and 48 hours post-training. Bees took significantly longer to learn polluted VOCs and forgot them faster than unpolluted ones. We also tested the 'masking' potential of pollution on floral VOCs. Using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy we noted differences in the chemical profile of polluted versus unpolluted VOCs and tested whether bees could recognise polluted VOCs if trained using unpolluted ones. For several VOCs tested, bees could distinguish between polluted and unpolluted VOCs. Ultimately, our results show that air pollution changes the recognition and retention of floral VOCs by bees which may consequently impact foraging efficiency.
Data from: Subfamily-dependent alternative reproductive strategies in worker honey bees
Functional worker sterility is the defining feature of insect societies. Yet, workers are sometimes found reproducing in their own or foreign colonies. The proximate mechanisms underlying these alternative reproductive phenotypes are key to understanding how reproductive altruism and selfishness are balanced in eusocial insects. In this study we show that in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies the social environment of a worker, i.e. the presence and relatedness of the queens in a worker's natal colony and in surrounding colonies, significantly influences her fertility and drifting behaviour. Furthermore, subfamilies vary in the frequency of worker ovarian activation, propensity to drift, and the kind of host colony that is targeted for reproductive parasitism. Our results show that there is an interplay between a worker's subfamily, reproductive state and social environment that substantially affects her reproductive phenotype. Our study further indicate that honey bee populations show substantial genetic variance for worker reproductive strategies, suggesting that no one strategy is optimal under all the circumstances that a typical worker may encounter.
Data from: Honey bee (Apis mellifera) sociability and nestmate affiliation is dependent on the social environment experienced post-eclosion
Underpinning the formation of a social group is the motivation of individuals to aggregate and interact with conspecifics, termed sociability. Here we developed an assay, inspired by vertebrate approaches to evaluate social behaviours, to simultaneously examine the development of honey bee (Apis mellifera) sociability and nestmate affiliation. Focal bees were placed in a testing chamber, which was separated from groups of nestmates and conspecific non-nestmates by single-layer mesh screens. Assessing how much time bees spent contacting the two mesh screens allowed us to quantify simultaneously how much bees sought proximity and interaction with other bees, and their preference for nestmates over non-nestmates. Both sociability and nestmate affiliation could be detected soon after emergence as an adult. Isolation early in adult life impaired honey bee sociability but there was no evidence for a critical period for the development of the trait since isolated bees exposed to their hive for 24 hours when as old as 6 days still recovered high levels of sociability. Our data show that even for advanced social insects, sociability is a developmental phenomenon and experience-dependent.
Data from: Honey bees flexibly use two navigational memories when updating dance distance information
Honey bees can communicate navigational information which makes them unique amongst all prominent insect navigators. Returning foragers recruit nest mates to a food source by communicating flight distance and direction using a small scale walking pattern: the waggle dance. It is still unclear how bees transpose flight information to generate corresponding dance information. In single feeder shift experiments, we monitored for the first time how individual bees update dance duration after a shift of feeder distance. Interestingly, the majority of bees (86%) needed two or more foraging trips to update dance duration. This finding demonstrates that transposing flight navigation information to dance information is not a reflexive behavior. Furthermore, many bees showed intermediate dance durations during the update process, indicating that honey bees highly likely use two memories: (i) a recently acquired navigation experience and (ii) a previously stored flight experience. Double shift experiments, in which the feeder was moved forward-backward, created an experimental condition in which honey bee foragers did not update dance duration; suggesting the involvement of more complex memory processes. Our behavioral paradigm allows the dissociation of foraging and dance activity and opens a possibility to study the molecular and neural processes underlying the waggle dance behavior.
Data from: Plastic senescence in the honey bee and the disposable soma theory
The demonstration of life span plasticity in natural populations would provide a powerful test of evolutionary theories of senescence. Plastic senescence is not easily explained by mutation accumulation or antagonistic pleiotropy but is a corollary of the disposable soma theory. The life span differences among castes of the eusocial Hymenoptera are potentially some of the most striking and extreme examples of life span plasticity. Although these differences are often assumed to be plastic, this has never been demonstrated conclusively because differences in life span may be caused by the proximate effects of different levels of environmental hazard experienced by castes. Here age-dependent and age-independent components of instantaneous mortality rates of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) were estimated from published life tables for natural and seminatural populations to determine whether differences in life span between queens and workers and between different types of workers are indeed plastic. These differences in life span were found to be due to differences in the rate of actuarial senescence, which correlate positively with the rate of extrinsic mortality, in accordance with the central prediction of evolutionary theories of senescence. Although all three evolutionary theories of senescence could in principle explain such plastic senescence, given differential gene expression between castes or life stages, only the disposable soma theory adequately explains the adaptive regulation of somatic maintenance in response to different environmental conditions that appears to underlie life span plasticity.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.