Centrality of Hygienic Honey Bee Workers in Colony Social Networks.

ABSTRACT: Many social and environmental variables can affect the interactions among individuals in an insect colony that fundamentally structure its social organization. Along with important attributes such as age and caste, immunity-related factors such as the performance of sanitary tasks or exposure to a pathogen can also influence an individual's social interactions and their place in the resulting social network. Most work on this subject has supported the hypothesis that health-compromised individuals will exhibit altered social or spatial behavior that presumably limits the spread of infection. Here, we test this hypothesis using honey bee workers recently involved in hygienic behavior, an important set of sanitary tasks in which unhealthy brood are uncapped and then removed from the colony.

SUBMITTER: Perez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11766216 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature