Behavioural plasticity in the fanning response of bumblebee workers : impact of experience and rate of temperature change

Westhus, Claudia; Kleineidam, Christoph; Roces, Flavio; Weidenmüller, Anja

Behavioural plasticity in the fanning response of bumblebee workers : impact of experience and rate of temperature change

Dateien

Westhus_248715.pdfGröße: 1002.29 KBDownloads: 461

Datum

2013

Autor:innen

Westhus, Claudia

Kleineidam, Christoph

Roces, Flavio

Weidenmüller, Anja

Open Access-Veröffentlichung

Open Access Green

Sammlungen

Biologie

Publikationstyp

Zeitschriftenartikel

Publikationsstatus

Published

Erschienen in

Animal Behaviour. 2013, 85(1), pp. 27-34. ISSN 0003-3472. eISSN 1095-8282. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.10.003

Zusammenfassung

Flexible division of labour is a key feature of social insects. Our understanding of individual response behaviour and how it is integrated into a functioning colony is still patchy. Most theoretical studies addressing this question are based on the assumption that workers have intrinsic and often fixed response thresholds for task-related stimuli. Here, we investigated the plasticity in worker fanning response behaviour in a bumblebee, Bombus terrestris. Using a temperature-controlled brood dummy, we first asked whether the fanning response is modulated by rate of temperature change. Second, we examined to what extent the fanning response is influenced by recent fanning experience. Our results show that the individual fanning response is modulated by both the rate of temperature increase and recent experience. Workers responded at lower temperatures and with a higher probability when the temperature of the brood dummy increased slowly compared with more rapid temperature increases. Workers that repeatedly responded to an increase in brood dummy temperature with fanning showed a significant decrease in their response thresholds, whereas the response thresholds of control workers that experienced the same treatment but did not gather fanning experience remained unchanged. The decrease in response threshold was pronounced when the time interval between two successive fanning events was less than 6 h. When 16 h or more separated fanning events, individual fanning responses returned to higher threshold levels. We suggest that experience-dependent modulation of response thresholds plays an important role in the behavioural differentiation of workers and the flexibility of insect colonies.

Fachgebiet (DDC)

570 Biowissenschaften, Biologie

Zitieren

ISO 690

WESTHUS, Claudia, Christoph KLEINEIDAM, Flavio ROCES, Anja WEIDENMÜLLER, 2013. Behavioural plasticity in the fanning response of bumblebee workers : impact of experience and rate of temperature change. In: Animal Behaviour. 2013, 85(1), pp. 27-34. ISSN 0003-3472. eISSN 1095-8282. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.10.003

BibTex

@article{Westhus2013Behav-24871,
  year={2013},
  doi={10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.10.003},
  title={Behavioural plasticity in the fanning response of bumblebee workers : impact of experience and rate of temperature change},
  number={1},
  volume={85},
  issn={0003-3472},
  journal={Animal Behaviour},
  pages={27--34},
  author={Westhus, Claudia and Kleineidam, Christoph and Roces, Flavio and Weidenmüller, Anja}
}

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Universitätsbibliographie

Ja