Hi all
New work by Christina Grozinger and Adria LeBoeuf expands our understanding of control systems within the honey bee colony, the relationships between the individual and the group, and the significant effect of variability. Rather than being uniform in their responses, individual colonies are unique in their responses, which are a sum of the interplay between the members of the colony and the colony as a whole organism. As in any dynamic system, there are multiple feedback loops, and ultimately -- no two colonies will be exactly the same. 

Excerpts for review purposes only:

What is the effect of individual variation on the social group?

There are several examples in which social groups of individuals with mixed behavioral tendencies have been created and the impacts on the groups’ behavioral tendencies have been examined. These experiments suggest that this small proportion of workers is actively influencing the behavior of the other 90% of workers likely through some highly propagated or volatile signal.

Studies of honey bee colonies consisting of a mix of defensive and gentle bees indicate that the guards (which are arguably functioning as keystone individuals) responded as rapidly as in defensive colonies, but the number of bees subsequently recruited was intermediate between gentle and defensive colonies. In honey bees, pheromones strongly influence worker behavior, and there is ample evidence that exposure to specific pheromones can trigger gene expression changes corresponding to the associated behavioral changes in recipient bees.

What is the effect of the group on the individual’s behavior?

An individual’s behavior is clearly strongly influenced by the social cues and signals (such as pheromones) it receives from other members of its social group. On a larger scale, the overall behavioral tendencies of the group can impact the behavior of the individual. 

Several recent studies suggest that the effect of the social group can go beyond simply ranking individuals according to their response thresholds. When honey bees from genotypes displaying low levels of hygienic behavior (removal of diseased larvae) were caged with bees displaying high levels of hygienic behavior, the low-line bees actually _increased_ their hygienic activity.

While the majority of the studies examining the interplay between individual and group behavioral tendencies have used stable groups, social groups themselves are dynamic: the role that individual variation plays in the functioning of the group under diverse social and environment conditions is an open area for investigation.

LeBoeuf, A. C., & Grozinger, C. M. (2014). Me and we: the interplay between individual and group behavioral variation in social collectives. Current Opinion in Insect Science.

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