PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #34: Animal Ecology: Behavior and Sociobiology.
Presiding: S. Richards
Tuesday, August 6. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Grand Ballroom East, Radisson.
Network information flows and energy minimization in eusocial bees.
Gremillion, Valerie*,1,2, Kodric-Brown, Astrid1, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM2 Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM
ABSTRACT- Social insects are characterized by highly developed social and communication structures. To increase our understanding of the roles played by these structures in increasing fitness, we analyzed Apis mellifera using a species-ecosystem network approach (Gremillion &Brown, 2001). This approach has found that species increase fitness by maximizing supportive inputs and minimizing detrimental inputs through a small number of network manipulation strategies. We analyzed inputs to A. mellifera, including mutualisms, disease, abiotic flows, and habitat in addition to food resources, predation, and competition. For A.mellifera, all of these flows are monitored and stimulate, through specialized signaling, dynamic division of labor. The interaction of communications and division of labor together maximize positive inputs and minimize negative ones, by tuning the type, magnitude, and variance of A. mellifera network flows. We suggest Apis bees evolved an advanced network manipulation strategy, adding new classes of positive input in the form of signaling channels. These channels, consisting of infrastructure investment in glands and sensory organs, and the information flows themselves, act to minimize conflict and energy costs, while maximizing efficiency by temporally tuning gains of network flows and decreasing long term variance through their induction of multiple forms of storage. Sophistication of signaling and its feedback loop with division of labor in A. mellifera produces the efficiency of its large colonies and the stored productivity that enables hive overwintering.
KEY WORDS: ecosystem network, signaling, division of labor, Apis mellifera