Abstract
In social insects, the tuning of activity levels among different worker task groups, which constitutes a fundamental basis of colony organization, relies on the exchange of reliable information on the activity level of individuals. The underlying stimuli, however, have remained largely unexplored so far. In the present study, we describe low-frequency thoracic vibrations generated by honey bee workers (Apis mellifera) within the colony, whose velocity amplitudes and main frequency components significantly increased with the level of an individual’s activity. The characteristics of these vibrations segregated three main activity level-groups: foragers, active hive bees, and inactive hive bees. Nectar foragers, moreover, modulated their low-frequency vibrations during trophallactic food unloading to nestmates according to the quality of the collected food. Owing to their clear association with the activity level of an individual and their potential perceptibility during direct contacts, these low-frequency thoracic vibrations are candidate stimuli for providing unambiguous local information on the motivational status of honey bee workers.
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Acknowledgements
The experiments complied with the “Principles of Animal Care”, publication No. 86-23, revised 1985 by the National Institute of Health, and with the current laws of the country in which the experiments were performed. The study was financially supported by the Brazilian Science Funds FAPESP [2006/50809-7] and CNPq [304722/2010-3] to MH, and funding of ANPCYT (PICT 2016 2084), the University of Buenos Aires (UBACYT 2018 20020170100078BA), CONICET (PIP 112-201501-00633) and a Guggenheim fellowship to WMF. We would like to thank Prof. Friedrich G. Barth and the University of Vienna-Austria for loaning the laser-vibrometer used for recording the bees’ low-frequency vibrations, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments on the manuscript.
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Hrncir, M., Maia-Silva, C. & Farina, W.M. Honey bee workers generate low-frequency vibrations that are reliable indicators of their activity level. J Comp Physiol A 205, 79–86 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-018-1305-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-018-1305-x