@article {135856, title = {How India Changed My Ideas About Honey Bees}, journal = {JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE }, year = {2023}, month = {10/2023}, abstract = {

Research on honey bees, one of the most famous social insects, has been largely limited to studies on Central European populations of the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Most researchers view the biology and social organization of this phylogenetically derived species as the blueprint for all honey bees, although there is accumulating evidence that several important characters are unique physiological or evolutionary adaptations to living in a temperate climate. The review presents a personal (re)collection of research efforts, ideas, and opinions on the neglected Asian honey bees. There are two major take-home messages: (1) it is of utmost importance that India and other tropical Asian countries increase their research efforts to study and conserve honey bees and other insect pollinators to sustain biodiversity and human nutritional demands, and (2) the study of the behavior of the phylogenetically ancestral Asian honey bees will provide us with a profound understanding of the structure and flexibility in the social organization of honey bees.

}, doi = {10.1007/s41745-023-00412-6}, author = {Brockmann, A} } @article {88612, title = {Adaptive tuning of the exploitation-exploration trade-off in four honey bee species}, journal = {Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology}, volume = {75}, year = {2021}, month = {01/2021}, abstract = {

Foraging animals continually face the decision of whether to exploit known resources or explore for new ones, a decision with large implications for their fitness. Though animal foraging decisions have been extensively studied, we currently lack a deep understanding of how the exploitation-exploration trade-off has evolved, including how it is shaped by divergent selection pressures between species. As a first step towards examining how the exploitation-exploration trade-off has been adaptively tuned by natural selection, we compared the exploratory behavior of four honey bee species that differ in traits such as nest architecture, body size, and colony size. In a common behavioral context{\textemdash}exploratory behavior triggered by a decrease in quality of a known food resource{\textemdash}we found species differences in exploratory behavior that are consistent with selection arising from evolved differences in nest architecture, though the behavioral differences were also strongly influenced by the magnitude of the reward decrease. We had expected that species that build their nests in the open, and hence face a higher fitness cost of worker attrition compared with species that inhabit protective cavities, would be less likely to prolong unrewarded search when food declines in quality. The behavioral data were partially consistent with this expectation. However, at times, the environmental context strongly modulated species differences in behavior that would be expected based on nest architecture. Overall, our results suggest that the resolution of the exploitation-exploration trade-off has been adaptively tuned between species by a number of interacting selection pressures.

}, doi = {10.1007/s00265-020-02938-6}, author = {Young, A.M. and Brockmann, A and Dyer, F.C.} } @article {88611, title = {Temporal and spatial foraging patterns of three Asian honey bee species in Bangalore, India}, journal = {Apidologie }, year = {2021}, month = {02/21}, abstract = {

Honey bees (genus Apis) are important pollinators in Asian tropical agricultural and natural ecosystems, yet the Asian species remain vastly understudied compared to the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. We studied the temporal and spatial foraging patterns of three co-occurring Asian honey bee species in Bangalore, India, to gain a better understanding of how they coexist. We found evidence for temporal resource partitioning, with Apis cerana having activity peaks in the early mornings, Apis florea initiating foraging later in the day, and Apis dorsata having the potential to do much of its foraging activity at night, even when the moon is not yet up. Apart from the established species differences in foraging ranges, we found limited evidence of spatial partitioning of the landscape. Although individual colonies foraging in parallel often focused their foraging effort on different patches, all three species preferred foraging in cultivated garden areas to seminatural or urban areas. These observations add to the growing evidence for a key role of gardens as foraging habitat for bees in cities.

}, doi = {10.1007/s13592-020-00839-1}, author = {Young, A.M. and Kohl, P.L. and Rutschmann, B. and teffen-Dewenter, I and Brockmann, A} } @article {28567, title = {Honey bee foraging induces upregulation of early growth response protein 1, hormone receptor 38 and candidate downstream genes of the ecdysteroid signalling pathway.}, journal = {Insect Mol Biol}, volume = {27}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Feb}, pages = {90-98}, abstract = {

In honey bees, continuous foraging at an artificial feeder induced a sustained upregulation of the immediate early genes early growth response protein 1 (Egr-1) and hormone receptor 38 (Hr38). This gene expression response was accompanied by an upregulation of several Egr-1 candidate downstream genes: ecdysone receptor (EcR), dopamine/ecdysteroid receptor (DopEcR), dopamine decarboxylase and dopamine receptor 2. Hr38, EcR and DopEcR are components of the ecdysteroid signalling pathway, which is highly probably involved in learning and memory processes in honey bees and other insects. Time-trained foragers still showed an upregulation of Egr-1 when the feeder was presented at an earlier time of the day, suggesting that the genomic response is more dependent on the food reward than training time. However, presentation of the feeder at the training time without food was still capable of inducing a transient increase in Egr-1 expression. Thus, learnt feeder cues, or even training time, probably affect Egr-1 expression. In contrast, whole brain Egr-1 expression changes did not differ between dancing and nondancing foragers. On the basis of our results we propose that food reward induced continuous foraging ultimately elicits a genomic response involving Egr-1 and Hr38 and their downstream genes. Furthermore this genomic response is highly probably involved in foraging-related learning and memory responses.

}, issn = {1365-2583}, doi = {10.1111/imb.12350}, author = {Singh, A S and Shah, A and Brockmann, A} } @article {5201, title = {Structural and temporal dynamics of the bee curtain in the open-nesting honey bee species, Apis florea}, journal = {Apidologie}, year = {2016}, month = {02/2016}, abstract = {

Workers of open-nesting honey bee species form a bee curtain to cover the comb and protect it against adverse environmental conditions and predators. We studied different aspects of structural and temporal dynamics of the bee curtain in Apis florea. First, in the course of daily observations, we discovered massed flight activity (MFA) of A. florea colonies similar to that previously described for A. dorsata. The MFAs started with the opening of gaps in the curtain and appearance of chains of bees shortly before the massed take off. Second, monitoring the worker movement patterns in the outer layer indicated a constant turnover of bees in the curtain. Finally, introduction of marked 1-day-old workers showed that workers joined the curtain at a very young age. First flight activity appeared around day 20, but the majority of workers started to fly after day 47, which is twice the age at which A. mellifera workers start to forage.

}, doi = {10.1007/s13592-016-0428-8}, author = {Bhagavan, H and Muthmann, O and Brockmann, A} }