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The survival consequences of grooming in the honey bee Apis mellifera

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Abstract

In social animals, disease management behaviors such as grooming occur in response to diverse stimuli, making it difficult to interpret the evolution and function of these phenotypes. The honey bee has a grooming repertoire that includes self-directed behaviors and allogrooming from nestmates. Many stimuli provoke these behaviors, and their impacts on individual and colony survivorship are unclear. We evaluated the effects of two different stressors on grooming frequencies and survivorship. We found that self-grooming frequency is activated in distinct ways in response to pathogen infection, pesticide treatment, and social context. Moreover, self-grooming frequency predicts individual survival. Allogrooming interactions were less common and did not predict individual survival. The honey bee highlights the difficulty inherent in interpreting the evolution and function of grooming interactions in highly social species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Jimmy Harrison for help maintaining honey bee colonies.

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Kentucky Office of Undergraduate Research Sustainability Research Fellowship (awarded to A. M. F.), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Program (1012993), the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (549049), and the National Science Foundation (IOS-2045901).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, S-225 Agriculture Science Center North, Lexington, KY, 40546, USA

    A. M. Foose, R. R. Westwick & C. C. Rittschof

  2. Aarvik Therapeutics, P 3/2 Officers Enclave, 4 AFSB, Varanasi Cantt, Varanasi, 221002, India

    M. Vengarai

Authors
  1. A. M. Foose
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  2. R. R. Westwick
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  3. M. Vengarai
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  4. C. C. Rittschof
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Contributions

AMF collected data and wrote the manuscript, RRW designed experiment, collected data, and edited the manuscript, MV designed figures and wrote the manuscript, CCR designed the experiment, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. C. Rittschof.

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Authors declare no competing interests.

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Foose, A.M., Westwick, R.R., Vengarai, M. et al. The survival consequences of grooming in the honey bee Apis mellifera. Insect. Soc. 69, 279–287 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-022-00868-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-022-00868-2

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