Biology of Conflict in Honey-Bee Colonies

蜂群冲突生物学

• 批准号: 8708668
• 负责人: Thomas Seeley
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 1987
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1987-08-01 至 1990-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8708668&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Biology; Conflict; Honey; Bee; Colonies

Interactions within animal societies are a complex mix of cooperation and conflict. This study will examine how the individuals in the honey-bee colony, a society exhibiting an extreme degree of cooperation, are nonetheless in conflict during certain of the colony's activities. The study focuses on the point of greatest conflict in honey-bee social life: the division of the colony between queens during swarming. It is among the first in hundreds of years of observations on bees to describe the behaviors of individual bees during swarming and afterswarming. Of special interest in this study is an understanding of how the bees decide which queens leave with swarms and how many swarms (queens) are produced, and how these decisions, resulting large-scale, colony-wide events, are built up from the behavior of individuals. This research will contribute to the general theory of social behavior by testing predictions of current evolutionary theory within a colony of advanced social insects. It will add to understanding of the way in which evolution shapes animal communication, and it will broaden our view of the nature of the societies of the advanced social insects by showing how, because they are genetically distinct, individuals within these societies may sharply conflict, although they so often cooperate. In addition, the control of swarming in honey bees remains one of the unsolved problems in practical management of honey bees for honey production and pollination of food crops. This research into the surprisingly little-studied social biology of swarming may thus have practical implications for the beekeeping industry and agriculture.

动物社会内部的互动是合作与冲突的复杂结合。 这项研究将研究蜜蜂殖民地（一个表现出极端合作的社会）中的个人如何在某些殖民地活动中发生冲突。 该研究重点是蜜蜂社会生活中最大的冲突点：蜂群中皇后区殖民地的分裂。 它是数百年来对蜜蜂观察的第一批描述在蜂拥而至和表演后单个蜜蜂行为的行为之一。 在这项研究中特别感兴趣的是了解蜜蜂如何决定哪些皇后区与群体一起离开，产生了多少群（皇后），以及这些决定是如何从个人行为中构成的大规模大规模，全殖民地事件的。 这项研究将通过测试先进社会昆虫群体中当前进化论的预测来促进社会行为的一般理论。 这将增加对进化塑造动物交流的方式的理解，并通过展示如何在遗传上差异的方式来扩大我们对先进社会昆虫社会本质的看法，尽管它们在这些社会中是遗传上的差异，但这些社会中的个人可能会剧烈冲突，尽管他们经常会合作。 此外，蜜蜂蜂群的控制仍然是蜂蜜蜜蜂生产和饮食作物授粉的蜜蜂实际管理中的未解决问题之一。 因此，这项对蜂群的鲜为人知的社会生物学的研究可能对养蜂业和农业具有实际影响。