Social Inhibition and the Regulation of Temporal Polyethism in Honey Bees

✍ Scribed by S.N. BESHERS; Z.Y. HUANG; Y. OONO; G.E. ROBINSON

• Book ID: 102613515
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 364 KB
• Volume: 213
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2427

✦ Synopsis

Honey bee division of labor is characterized by temporal polyethism, in which young workers remain in the hive and perform tasks there, whereas old workers perform more risky outside tasks, mainly foraging. We present a model of honey bee division of labor based on (1) an intrinsic process of behavioral development and (2) inhibition of development through social interactions among the workers in a colony. The model shows that these two processes can explain the main features of honey bee temporal polyethism: the correlation between age and task performance; the age at which a worker "rst forages and how this age varies among hives; the balanced allocation of workers to hive tasks and foraging; the recovery of a colony from demographic perturbations; and the di!erentiation of workers into di!erent behavioral roles. The model provides a baseline picture of individual and colony behavior that can serve as the basis for studies of more "ne-grained regulation of division of labor.