We first hypothesized there are individual bee differences in responsiveness to various social stimuli, associated with unique neurogenomic signatures. To test this hypothesis, we exposed groups of 10 7-d-old honey bee nestmates to a social responsiveness assay in the laboratory, which involved exposures to two different social stimuli. 

One stimulus provided a social challenge: an unrelated bee as a territorial threat, which provokes an aggressive response. The other stimulus provided a social opportunity: a queen larva, which provokes alloparental care.

We observed a full range of social responsiveness, from individuals consistently unresponsive to either social stimulus to individuals consistently responding strongly to both stimuli. 

We focused on the following three behavioral types: 9.3% responded consistently only to the social opportunity (“nurses”), 7.7% responded consistently only to the social challenge (“guards”), and 14% never responded to either stimulus (“unresponsive”).

In social insects, the fitness of an individual is dependent on the performance of the whole colony, and perhaps it is less costly for a large insect society to tolerate unresponsive individuals than to actively exclude them. 

Supporting this speculation, inactive individuals have been reported in several social insect species and are usually interpreted as providing colonies with the advantages of a “reserve” labor force that will act when the colony faces a stressful situation. 

However, inactive honey bees do not always respond to changes in colony needs, and here we have identified individuals at the extremes of social responsiveness spectra who may not have any adaptive value to their colony. 

Hagai Y. Shpigler, Gene E. Robinson. (2017) Deep evolutionary conservation of autism-related genes
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708127114

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