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Date: | Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:26:00 -0600 |
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Could this be happening a lot right before our eyes and only noticed in
the most extreme cases of disease or poisoning?
Altruistic self-removal of health-compromised honey bee workers from
their hive
By: Olav Rueppell, M.K Hayworth and N.P. Ross
Rueppell, O., Hayworth, M. K., and Ross, N. P. (July 2010) Altruistic
self-removal of health-compromised honey bee workers from their hive.
Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 23(7), 1538-1546. DOI:
10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02022.x
The definitive version is available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com.
Abstract:
Social insect colonies represent distinct units of selection. Most
individuals evolve by kin selection and forgo individual reproduction.
Instead, they display altruistic food sharing, nest maintenance and
self-sacrificial colony defence. Recently, altruistic self-removal of
diseased worker ants from their colony was described as another
important kin-selected behaviour. Here, we report corroborating
experimental evidence from honey bee foragers and theoretical analyses.
We challenged honey bee foragers with prolonged CO2 narcosis or by
feeding with the cytostatic drug hydroxyurea. Both treatments resulted
in increased mortality but also caused the surviving foragers to
abandon their social function and remove themselves from their colony,
resulting in altruistic suicide. A simple model suggests that
altruistic self-removal by sick social insect workers to prevent
disease transmission is expected under most biologically plausible
conditions. The combined theoretical and empirical support for
altruistic self-removal suggests that it may be another important
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