Collective personalities in honeybee colonies are linked to colony fitness

Abstract

Personality differences (i.e. consistent between-individual differences in behaviour) play an important role in the lives of humans and other animals, influencing both their day-to-day actions and their long-term reproductive success. For organisms living in highly structured groups of related individuals, such as colonies of social insects, personalities could also emerge at the group level. However, while numerous recent studies have investigated individual-level personality, the phenomenon of collective personality in animal groups has received little attention. In this paper, we apply the concept of collective personality to colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera). We document the presence of consistent differences among colonies across a wide range of collective behaviours and demonstrate a link between colony-level personality traits and fitness. The colonies in our study showed consistent behavioural differences in traits such as defensive response, foraging activity and undertaking, and several of these traits were correlated as part of a behavioural syndrome. Furthermore, some of these traits were strongly tied to colony productivity and winter survival. Our results show that the concept of collective personality is applicable to colonies of social insects, and that personality differences among colonies can have important consequences for their long-term survival and reproduction. Applying the concept of personality to close-knit animal groups can provide important insights into the structure of behavioural variability in animal populations and the role that consistent between-group behavioural differences play in the evolution of behaviour.