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The Use of Food Source Scent Marks by the Stingless Bee Trigona Corvina

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The Use of Food Source Scent Marks by the Stingless Bee Trigona Corvina The use of food source scent marks by the stingless bee Trigona corvina (Hymenoptera: Apidae): the importance of the depositor’s identity Neeltje Janna Boogert, Frouke Elisabeth Hofstede, Ingrid Aguilar Monge To cite this version: Neeltje Janna Boogert, Frouke Elisabeth Hofstede, Ingrid Aguilar Monge. The use of food source scent marks by the stingless bee Trigona corvina (Hymenoptera: Apidae): the importance of the depositor’s identity. Apidologie, Springer Verlag, 2006, 37 (3), pp.366-375. hal-00892185 HAL Id: hal-00892185 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00892185 Submitted on 1 Jan 2006 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Apidologie 37 (2006) 366–375 © INRA/DIB-AGIB/ EDP Sciences, 2006 DOI: 10.1051/apido:2006001 Original article The use of food source scent marks by the stingless bee Trigona corvina (Hymenoptera: Apidae): the importance of the depositor’s identity1 Neeltje Janna BOOGERTa*, Frouke Elisabeth HOFSTEDEa, Ingrid AGUILAR MONGEb a Utrecht University, Department of Behavioural Biology, Tropical Bee Research Unit, PO Box 80.086, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands b Universidad Nacional Costa Rica, Centro de Investigaciones Apícolas Tropicales, PO Box 475 – 3000, Heredia, Costa Rica, Centroamérica Received 18 August 2005 – revised 13 September 2005 – accepted 14 September 2005 Abstract – The deposition and use of scent marks on food sources has been found in foraging solitary bees, bumblebees, stingless bees and honeybees. The widespread existence of this communication mechanism points to its ecological significance. The importance of the depositor’s identity on the use of food source scent marks, however, has never been systematically investigated in the same bee species. Here we present strong evidence that individual foragers of the stingless bee species Trigona corvina scent marked a high quality food source and that they used their own scent marks to relocate it in choice experiments. T. corvina foragers showed a similar significant preference for a food source scent marked by their nest mates and by bees from a conspecific colony over a non-scent marked food source. However, no evidence for the use of scent marks deposited by other stingless bee species was found. The implications of these findings for the evolution of food source scent marking in bees are discussed. scent mark / food source / depositor / stingless bee / Trigona / chemical communication 1. INTRODUCTION use of these chemical signals improves forag- ing efficiency: repellent scent marks reduce the Social bees living in colonies, such as hon- time that is wasted in probing depleted flowers eybees, bumblebees and stingless bees, need to (e.g. Giurfa, 1993; Williams, 1998; Gilbert exploit multiple food sources (e.g. flowers for et al., 2001; Stout and Goulson, 2002), while pollen and nectar) efficiently to meet the high attractant scent marks advertise the presence of energy demands of their larvae and mainte- rich food sources (e.g. von Frisch, 1967; nance of the colony. In their joint efforts to Ferguson and Free, 1979; Free and Williams, achieve this, foragers are confronted with 1983; Schmitt and Bertsch, 1990). ephemeral and scattered food sources that are A single flower patch is often exploited by visited by other insects as well. A wide variety several bees and bee species simultaneously. of food source communication mechanisms Thus, apart from their own scent marks, indi- has evolved to face these temporal, spatial and vidual foragers may encounter those deposited ecological challenges (Nieh, 2004). One of the on flowers by nest mates, non-nest mate con- ways social bees communicate a flower’s loca- specifics and bees from other species as well. tion and profitability in the field, is by depos- These circumstances may have led to the evo- iting scent marks on it (Michener, 1974). The lution of the ability to use all scent marks * Corresponding author: [email protected] 1 Manuscript editor: Stan Schneider Article published by EDP Sciences and available at http://www.edpsciences.org/apido or http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/apido:2006001 Depositor affects stingless bee scent mark use 367 independent of the depositor’s identity. Bum- colony were similar to those in which the scent blebees (Bombus spp.) have already been found marks came from their own colony; the forag- to detect and reject, with a high degree of accu- ers made significantly more visits to the scent racy, flowers that have been visited previously marked feeder than to a clean control feeder by themselves, conspecifics and other species (Villa and Weiss, 1990; Schmidt et al., 2005). of bumblebees (Goulson et al., 1998, 2000; Tetragonisca angustula was also studied Williams, 1998). Honeybee workers (Apis mel- regarding its use of heterospecific scent marks lifera) deposit scent marks that attract recruited (Villa and Weiss, 1990). When T. angustula nest mates to previously visited profitable food bees were offered the choice between a dish sources (von Frisch, 1967; Ferguson and Free, scent marked by nest mates and a dish scent 1979; Free and Williams, 1983). In addition, marked by foragers of another stingless bee the own and nest mate scent marks were shown species (T. peckolti), all visits were made to the to be used to avoid visiting flowers recently dish with the nest mate scent marks (Villa and depleted of nectar (Giurfa, 1993; Williams, Weiss, 1990). However, this finding does not 1998). However, whether honeybees and bum- necessarily indicate that stingless bees can not blebees can use each other’s food source scent use other stingless bee species’ scent marks, but marks remains to be clarified, for contradictory merely that nest mate scent marks were pre- results have been published; honeybees and ferred over heterospecific scent marks by T. bumblebees showed no reaction to each other’s angustula foragers. scent marks in a field study by Williams (1998), Indeed, recently it has been shown that whereas a strong repellent effect of the other stingless bees do make use of heterospecific species’ scent marks was described in later scent marks. Naive foragers of the stingless bee field studies (Stout and Goulson, 2001). species Trigona spinipes strongly preferred The common phenomenon of food source scent marks deposited by Melipona rufiventris scent marking has been studied in a number of over nest mate scent marks on food sources at stingless bee species as well. The stingless bee new locations (Nieh et al., 2004b). M. rufiven- species Melipona favosa (Aguilar and Sommeijer, tris foragers, on the other hand, avoided scent 2001) and Plebeia tica (Aguilar et al., 2004a) marks deposited by T. spinipes foragers. The have been found to use their own scent marks interspecific use of scent marks (termed “olfac- to relocate a high quality food source. Nearly tory eavesdropping” by Nieh et al., 2004b) may all other research on scent marking in stingless be advantageous for aggressive species to bees addresses the use of scent marks deposited detect and take over valuable food sources dis- on the food source by nest mates. For example, covered by other bees, as well as for less M. panamica (Nieh, 1998), Trigona fulviven- aggressive species to avoid costly conflicts at tris (Goulson et al., 2001), M. mandacaia (Nieh sites being exploited by superior competitors et al., 2003a), T. hyalinata (Nieh et al., 2003b), (Nieh et al., 2004b). Scaptotrigona depilis (Schmidt et al., 2003), Whether the use of scent marks is individ- Plebeia tica (Aguilar et al., 2004a), M. semini- ual-specific, colony-specific, species-specific gra (Hrncir et al., 2004), T. recursa (Jarau et al., or genus-specific has never been addressed sys- 2004), T. spinipes (Nieh et al., 2004a), M. rufiv- tematically in a single (stingless) bee species. entris (Nieh et al., 2004b) and Nannotrigona Study of these issues may improve our under- testaceicornis (Schmidt et al., 2005) are standing of the function and phylogeny of this attracted to nest mate scent marks when given food source communication mechanism. We the choice between a clean food source and one investigated the importance of the scent mark scent marked by nest mates or baited with their depositor’s identity in Trigona corvina glandular extracts. (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini), a mass- The use of food source scent marks depos- recruiting species from the same genus as sev- ited by stingless bees from a conspecific colony eral other stingless bee species that have been seems to have been investigated only in reported to scent mark food sources (e.g. T. Tetragonisca angustula (Villa and Weiss, 1990) mexicana, Villa and Weiss, 1990; T. fulviven- and Nannotrigona testaceicornis (Schmidt tris, Goulson et al., 2001; T. hyalinata, Nieh et al., 2005). Foragers’ responses to a feeder et al., 2003b; T. recursa, Jarau et al., 2004 and scent marked by bees from another conspecific T. spinipes, Nieh et al., 2004a, b). Trigona corvina 368 N.J. Boogert et al. has been observed to repeatedly land on the respectively). In this way we minimized any con- food source during recruitment (Aguilar and founding effects of test subjects’ artificial food den Held, 2003; Aguilar et al., 2004b, 2005), source experience acquired during training, on their behaviour that may be indicative of scent mark- subsequent choices between scent marked and clean T. corvina test feeders during the experiments (see Gould, ing (Jarau et al., 2004). can be 1993). categorized as an “extirpator” species that aggressively displaces rivals from monopo- To train bees, the training feeder was placed in front of the nest entrance.
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