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Honeybee communication: animal social learning at the height of social complexity

Descrizione del progetto

DEENESFRITPL

Esplorare il modo in cui si diffondono le informazioni nelle società di insetti

Il progetto BeeDanceGap, finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, cerca di attingere all’enorme complessità delle società delle api da miele per capire come le informazioni fluiscono attraverso uno dei sistemi di comunicazione più complessi del regno animale. Nelle colonie di api, le bottinatrici sono orchestrate attraverso il famoso «linguaggio della danza», che fornisce una rete di informazione per controllare quali api sono assegnate a quali risorse. Utilizzando la trascrittomica e le tecniche di modellizzazione basate sulla rete, i ricercatori intendono esplorare come questa comunicazione controlli le decisioni prese dalle singole api e come queste evolvono per produrre colonie che si comportano come un collettivo efficiente.

Obiettivo

Learning from others is fundamental to ecological success across the animal kingdom, but a key theme to emerge from recent research is that individuals respond differently to social information. Understanding this diversity is an imposing challenge, because it is hard to replicate the overwhelming complexity of free-living groups within controlled laboratory conditions. Yet here I propose that one of the most complex social models that we know of— the sophisticated eusocial societies of honeybees— offer unrivaled and yet unrecognized potential to study social information flow through a natural group. The honeybee “dance language” is one of the most celebrated communication systems in the animal world, and central to a powerful information network that drives our most high-profile pollinator to food, but bee colonies are uniquely tractable for two reasons. Firstly, next-generation transcriptomics could allow us to delve deep into this complexity at the molecular level, on a scale that is simply not available in vertebrate social systems. I propose to track information flow through a natural group using brain gene expression profiles, to understand how dances elicit learning in the bee brain. Secondly, although bee foraging ranges are vast and diverse, social learning takes place in one centralized location (the hive). The social sciences now offer powerful new tools to analyze social networks, and I will use a cutting-edge network-based modelling approach to understand how the importance of social learning mechanisms shifts with ecology. In the face of global pollinator decline, understanding the contribution of foraging drivers to colony success has never been more pressing, but the importance of the dance language reaches far beyond food security concerns. This research integrates proximate and ultimate perspectives to produce a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary program; a high-risk, high-gain journey into new territory for understanding animal communication.

Campo scientifico

Programma(i)

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ERC-2014-STG

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Meccanismo di finanziamento

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

Istituzione ospitante

ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 320 301,59
Indirizzo
EGHAM HILL UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
TW20 0EX Egham
Regno Unito

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Regione
South East (England) Surrey, East and West Sussex West Surrey
Tipo di attività
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Collegamenti
Costo totale
€ 1 320 301,59

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Ultimo aggiornamento: 24 Agosto 2022

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/638873/it

European Union, 2024