BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:18:33 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (31 lines)
> It might be fun to list  how many examples we can find of this 

Collective personalities in honeybee colonies are linked to colony fitness
Margaret K. Wray, Heather R. Mattila, Thomas D. Seeley  (2010)

Personality differences (i.e. consistent between-individual differences in behaviour) play an important
role in the lives of humans and other animals, influencing both their day-to-day actions and their longterm
reproductive success. For organisms living in highly structured groups of related individuals, such
as colonies of social insects, personalities could also emerge at the group level. However, while numerous
recent studies have investigated individual-level personality, the phenomenon of collective personality
in animal groups has received little attention. In this paper, we apply the concept of collective personality
to colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera). We document the presence of consistent differences among
colonies across a wide range of collective behaviours and demonstrate a link between colony-level
personality traits and fitness. The colonies in our study showed consistent behavioural differences in
traits such as defensive response, foraging activity and undertaking, and several of these traits were
correlated as part of a behavioural syndrome. Furthermore, some of these traits were strongly tied to
colony productivity and winter survival. Our results show that the concept of collective personality is
applicable to colonies of social insects, and that personality differences among colonies can have
important consequences for their long-term survival and reproduction. Applying the concept of
personality to close-knit animal groups can provide important insights into the structure of behavioural
variability in animal populations and the role that consistent between-group behavioural differences
play in the evolution of behaviour.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm

ATOM RSS1 RSS2