Sugar Intake Elicits Intelligent Searching Behavior in Flies and Honey Bees

Nutrigenetic comparison of two Varroa-resistant honey bee stocks fed pollen and spirulina microalgae

Apidologie ◽

10.1007/s13592-021-00877-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Vincent A Ricigliano ◽

Kate E Ihle ◽

Steven T Williams

Keyword(s):

Honey Bee ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Fat Body ◽

Global Climate ◽

Green Microalgae ◽

Lipid Levels ◽

Artificial Diets ◽

Body Lipid ◽

Sugar Intake ◽

Diet Type

AbstractWe tested the influence of genetic variation on responses to natural and artificial diets in Varroa-resistant Pol-line and Russian honey bee stocks. Newly emerged workers from six colonies per stock were fed pollen, spirulina (blue-green microalgae), and sucrose-only diets in 144 total cages. Diet type had a strong effect on sugar intake, body weight, fat body lipid content, and vitellogenin (vg) expression. Spirulina consumption was approximately half that of pollen, but led to higher head weights, equivalent thorax weights and vg levels, and marginally reduced fat body lipids. Bee stock and colony had a significant impact on nutritional response. Despite equivalent diet intakes, Pol-line bees accumulated higher lipid levels and consumed less sugar overall than Russian bees. Furthermore, pollen-fed bees sourced from Pol-line colonies had significantly higher vg levels. These differences in nutrient and energy allocation may reflect life history-related physiological tradeoffs. Our results suggest that genotype-dependent nutritional responses are present in honey bees, with promising implications for breeding efforts and tailored approaches to diet and health in a changing global climate.

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Sugar intake elicits a small-scale search behavior in flies and honey bees that involves capabilities found in large-scale navigation

10.1101/171215 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Axel Brockmann ◽

Satoshi Murata ◽

Naomi Murashima ◽

Ravi Kumar Boyapati ◽

Manal Shakeel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Local Search ◽

Social Insects ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Path Integration ◽

Large Scale ◽

Search Behavior ◽

Small Scale ◽

Sugar Intake ◽

Navigation Path ◽

Landmark Learning

AbstractSocial insects, particularly bees and ants, show exceptional large-scale navigational skills to find and carry back food to their nests. Honey bees further evolved a symbolic communication to direct nest mates to attractive food sources. Till now it is unclear how these capabilities evolved. Sixty years ago, Vincent Dethier demonstrated that a small-scale sugar-elicited search behavior identified in flies shows remarkable similarities with honey bee dance behavior. Those findings suggested that both behaviors are based on common mechanisms and are likely evolutionary related. We now present for the first time a detailed comparison of the sugar-elicited search behavior in Drosophila melanogaster and Apis mellifera. In both species, intake of sugar elicits a complex of searching responses. The most obvious response was an increase in turning frequency, but more importantly we found that flies and honey bees returned to the location of the sugar drop. They even returned to the food location when we prevented them from using visual and chemosensory cues indicating that this small scale local search involves path integration mechanisms. Finally, we show that visual landmarks presented in the vicinity of the sugar drop affected the search trajectory and in honey bees the sugar intake induced learning of landmarks. Together, our experiments indicate that the sugar-elicited local search exhibits two major behavioral capabilities of large-scale navigation, path integration and landmark orientation.Significance StatementTo search for food social insects evolved sophisticated strategies of spatial orientation and large-scale navigation. We now show that even a small-scale local search behavior in solitary flies and social honey bees involves path integration and landmark learning two major mechanisms of large-scale navigation. We propose that in the future sugar-elicited local search can be used to identify neural circuits involved in navigation, path integration, and landmark learning.

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