Honey bees live in colonies containing tens of thousands of workers that coordinate their activit... more Honey bees live in colonies containing tens of thousands of workers that coordinate their activities to produce efficient colony-level behavior. In free-foraging colonies, nest bees are entrained to the forager daily phase of activity even when experiencing conflicting light-dark illumination regime, but little is known on the cues mediating this potent social synchronization. We monitored locomotor activity in an array of individually caged bees in which we manipulated the contact with neighbour bees. We used circular statistics and coupling function analyses to estimate the degree of social synchronization. We found that young bees in cages connected to cages housing foragers showed stronger rhythms, better synchronization with each other, higher coupling strength, and a phase more similar to that of the foragers compared to similar bees in unconnected cages. These findings suggest that close distance contacts are sufficient for social synchronization or that cage connection facil...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Many animals benefit from synchronizing their daily activities with conspecifics. In this hybrid ... more Many animals benefit from synchronizing their daily activities with conspecifics. In this hybrid paper, we first review recent literature supporting and extending earlier evidence for a lack of clear relationship between the level of sociality and social entrainment of circadian rhythms. Social entrainment is specifically potent in social animals that live in constant environments in which some or all individuals do not experience the ambient day-night cycles. We next focus on highly social honeybees in which there is good evidence that social cues entrain the circadian clocks of nest bees and can override the influence of conflicting light-dark cycles. The current understanding of social synchronization in honeybees is consistent with self-organization models in which surrogates of forager activity, such as substrate-borne vibrations and colony volatiles, entrain the circadian clocks of bees dwelling in the dark cavity of the nest. Finally, we present original findings showing that...
Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecological... more Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecologically-relevant external time-givers such as light and temperature cycles. In the highly social honey bee, social time-givers are important and can override photic entrainment, but the cues mediating social synchronization are unknown. Here we tested whether substrate-borne vibrations and hive volatiles can mediate social synchronization in honey bees. We first placed newly-emerged worker bees on the same or on a different substrate on which we placed cages with foragers entrained to ambient day- night cycles, while minimizing transfer of volatiles between cages. In the second experiment, we exposed young bees to constant airflow coming from either a free-foraging colony or a similar size control hive containing only empty combs, while minimizing transfer of substrate-borne vibrations between cages. After five days, we individually isolated each focal bee in an individual cage in an environm...
Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecological... more Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecologically relevant external time-givers such as light and temperature cycles. In the highly social honey bee, social time-givers are potent and can override photic entrainment, but the cues mediating social entrainment are unknown. Here, we tested whether substrate-borne vibrations and hive volatiles can mediate social synchronization in honey bees. We first placed newly emerged worker bees on the same or on a different substrate on which we placed cages with foragers entrained to ambient day-night cycles, while minimizing the spread of volatiles between cages. In the second experiment, we exposed young bees to constant airflow drawn from either a free-foraging colony or a similar-size control hive containing only heated empty honeycombs, while minimizing transfer of substrate-borne vibrations between cages. After 6 days, we isolated each focal bee in an individual cage in an environmental cham...
Honey bees live in colonies containing tens of thousands of workers that coordinate their activit... more Honey bees live in colonies containing tens of thousands of workers that coordinate their activities to produce efficient colony-level behavior. In free-foraging colonies, nest bees are entrained to the forager daily phase of activity even when experiencing conflicting light-dark illumination regime, but little is known on the cues mediating this potent social synchronization. We monitored locomotor activity in an array of individually caged bees in which we manipulated the contact with neighbour bees. We used circular statistics and coupling function analyses to estimate the degree of social synchronization. We found that young bees in cages connected to cages housing foragers showed stronger rhythms, better synchronization with each other, higher coupling strength, and a phase more similar to that of the foragers compared to similar bees in unconnected cages. These findings suggest that close distance contacts are sufficient for social synchronization or that cage connection facil...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Many animals benefit from synchronizing their daily activities with conspecifics. In this hybrid ... more Many animals benefit from synchronizing their daily activities with conspecifics. In this hybrid paper, we first review recent literature supporting and extending earlier evidence for a lack of clear relationship between the level of sociality and social entrainment of circadian rhythms. Social entrainment is specifically potent in social animals that live in constant environments in which some or all individuals do not experience the ambient day-night cycles. We next focus on highly social honeybees in which there is good evidence that social cues entrain the circadian clocks of nest bees and can override the influence of conflicting light-dark cycles. The current understanding of social synchronization in honeybees is consistent with self-organization models in which surrogates of forager activity, such as substrate-borne vibrations and colony volatiles, entrain the circadian clocks of bees dwelling in the dark cavity of the nest. Finally, we present original findings showing that...
Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecological... more Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecologically-relevant external time-givers such as light and temperature cycles. In the highly social honey bee, social time-givers are important and can override photic entrainment, but the cues mediating social synchronization are unknown. Here we tested whether substrate-borne vibrations and hive volatiles can mediate social synchronization in honey bees. We first placed newly-emerged worker bees on the same or on a different substrate on which we placed cages with foragers entrained to ambient day- night cycles, while minimizing transfer of volatiles between cages. In the second experiment, we exposed young bees to constant airflow coming from either a free-foraging colony or a similar size control hive containing only empty combs, while minimizing transfer of substrate-borne vibrations between cages. After five days, we individually isolated each focal bee in an individual cage in an environm...
Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecological... more Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecologically relevant external time-givers such as light and temperature cycles. In the highly social honey bee, social time-givers are potent and can override photic entrainment, but the cues mediating social entrainment are unknown. Here, we tested whether substrate-borne vibrations and hive volatiles can mediate social synchronization in honey bees. We first placed newly emerged worker bees on the same or on a different substrate on which we placed cages with foragers entrained to ambient day-night cycles, while minimizing the spread of volatiles between cages. In the second experiment, we exposed young bees to constant airflow drawn from either a free-foraging colony or a similar-size control hive containing only heated empty honeycombs, while minimizing transfer of substrate-borne vibrations between cages. After 6 days, we isolated each focal bee in an individual cage in an environmental cham...
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