Resilience of honeybee colonies via common stomach: A model of self-regulation of foraging.

ABSTRACT: We propose a new regulation mechanism based on the idea of the "common stomach" to explain several aspects of the resilience and homeostatic regulation of honeybee colonies. This mechanism exploits shared pools of substances (pollen, nectar, workers, brood) that modulate recruitment, abandonment and allocation patterns at the colony-level and enable bees to perform several survival strategies to cope with difficult circumstances: Lack of proteins leads to reduced feeding of young brood, to early capping of old brood and to regaining of already spent proteins through brood cannibalism. We modeled this system by linear interaction terms and mass-action law. To test the predictive power of the model of this regulatory mechanism we compared our model predictions to experimental data of several

SUBMITTER: Schmickl T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5697885 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature