Understanding the role of recruitment communication for colony foraging success in stingless bees (Meliponini)

Abstract

Social insects often rely on information provided by nest-mates to locate resources. Many ants, termites and stingless bees use pheromone trails for recruitment, while the honey bee (Apis mellifera) uses an intricate 'dance language' to communicate the location of food sources to fellow workers. We plan to study 8 species of stingless bees with different recruitment methods to test the prediction that foragers of species with recruitment communication exploit higher quality food sources. This prediction arises from the fact that foragers often only recruit to high quality food sources and thereby "filter information" for their nestmates. (AU)