Abstract
Social distancing in response to infectious diseases is a strategy exhibited by human and nonhuman animals to counteract the spread of pathogens and/or parasites. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies are ideal models to study this behavior because of the compartmentalized structure of these societies, evolved under exposure to parasite pressure and the need to ensure efficient functioning. Here, by using a combination of spatial and behavioral approaches, we investigated whether the presence of the ectoparasite mite Varroa destructor induces changes in the social organization of A. mellifera colonies that could reduce the spread of the parasite. Our results demonstrated that honey bees react to the intrusion of V. destructor by modifying space use and social interactions to increase the social distancing between young (nurses) and old (foragers) cohorts of bees. These findings strongly suggest a behavioral strategy not previously reported in honey bees to limit the intracolony parasite transmission.
Highlights
Social insects are vulnerable to pathogens and parasites owing to the dense network of contacts among highly related nestmates and the large amounts of food stored in a nest under relatively stable environmental conditions [1]
We investigated whether the presence of the ectoparasite mite V. destructor in honey bee colonies induces changes in the social immunity strategies that could reduce the spread of the parasite
Our study demonstrates that honey bee colonies react to the invasion of an ectoparasitic mite with significant changes in behavioral traits associated with social immunity at both the whole colony and the individual level
Summary
Social insects are vulnerable to pathogens and parasites owing to the dense network of contacts among highly related nestmates and the large amounts of food stored in a nest under relatively stable environmental conditions [1]. Social insects have evolved, in addition to individual immune responses, many forms of social immunity, i.e., strategies based on the cooperation of the individual group members [2] The latter occur at the behavioral, physiological, and organizational level and can act synergistically to avoid invasion, establishment, and replication of pathogens or parasites inside the colony [2, 3]. It can be predicted that the rate of contacts between nestmates would be limited by spatial and behavioral compartmentalization of the different cohorts of individuals, according to their age, role (caste), and activity (task) [6,7,8] Such a “constitutive organizational immunity” takes place in the absence of a disease challenge, acting as a prophylactic immune defense [2, 6, 8]. A clear-cut demonstration of this theoretical model in social insects was given by Stroeymeyt et al [9]
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