Abstract
Patterns of behavior within societies have long been visualized and interpreted using maps. Mapping the occurrence of sleep across individuals within a society could offer clues as to functional aspects of sleep. In spite of this, a detailed spatial analysis of sleep has never been conducted on an invertebrate society. We introduce the concept of mapping sleep across an insect society, and provide an empirical example, mapping sleep patterns within colonies of European honey bees (Apis mellifera L.). Honey bees face variables such as temperature and position of resources within their colony's nest that may impact their sleep. We mapped sleep behavior and temperature of worker bees and produced maps of their nest's comb contents as the colony grew and contents changed. By following marked bees, we discovered that individuals slept in many locations, but bees of different worker castes slept in different areas of the nest relative to position of the brood and surrounding temperature. Older worker bees generally slept outside cells, closer to the perimeter of the nest, in colder regions, and away from uncapped brood. Younger worker bees generally slept inside cells and closer to the center of the nest, and spent more time asleep than awake when surrounded by uncapped brood. The average surface temperature of sleeping foragers was lower than the surface temperature of their surroundings, offering a possible indicator of sleep for this caste. We propose mechanisms that could generate caste-dependent sleep patterns and discuss functional significance of these patterns.
Highlights
Maps help to integrate data in ways that clarify patterns or relationships in the lives of organisms
Honey bee activity has been visualized outside the nest with respect to flight paths [8,9], simulated flight paths relative to landmarks [10], and inside the nest for spatial organization of waggle dance information [11] and patterns generated by removal rates of comb contents [12]
Honey bees belonging to all worker castes exhibited sleep
Summary
Maps help to integrate data in ways that clarify patterns or relationships in the lives of organisms. Seeley [13] created maps depicting twelve of the most commonly performed tasks within a nest of honey bees. Studies mapping sleep of invertebrates are limited to measurements of individual inactivity, usually within highly artificial settings (e.g., fruit fly stasis within test tubes, [14]). This is in contrast with the more extensive literature devoted to the study of vertebrate sleep sites, which has offered insight as to some functional implications of sleeping socially, especially with respect to vigilance and predator avoidance [15,16,17]
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