Abstract
Circadian rhythms in behaviour and physiology are important for animal health and survival. Studies with individually isolated animals in the laboratory have consistently emphasized the dominant role of light for the entrainment of circadian rhythms to relevant environmental cycles. Although in nature interactions with conspecifics are functionally significant, social signals are typically not considered important time-givers for the animal circadian clock. Our results challenge this view. By studying honeybees in an ecologically relevant context and using a massive data set, we demonstrate that social entrainment can be potent, may act without direct contact with other individuals and does not rely on gating the exposure to light. We show for the first time that social time cues stably entrain the clock, even in animals experiencing conflicting photic and social environmental cycles. These findings add to the growing appreciation for the importance of studying circadian rhythms in ecologically relevant contexts.
Highlights
Circadian rhythms in behaviour and physiology are important for animal health and survival
Do young nest bees that are typically active around-the-clock in a constantly dark hive have clocks that are entrained with the ambient day–night cycle? In the first experiment we found that nurses in a dark hive show strong circadian rhythms in locomotor activity shortly after transfer to the laboratory in both trials
Given that the experiments above showed that the colony environment effectively entrains circadian rhythms in young honeybees, we examined whether this social time-giver can compete with strong photic entrainment
Summary
Circadian rhythms in behaviour and physiology are important for animal health and survival. In nature interactions with conspecifics are functionally significant, social signals are typically not considered important time-givers for the animal circadian clock. We show for the first time that social time cues stably entrain the clock, even in animals experiencing conflicting photic and social environmental cycles These findings add to the growing appreciation for the importance of studying circadian rhythms in ecologically relevant contexts. Given that the light–dark (LD) cycle is the dominant environmental factor influencing circadian rhythms, it was further proposed that social stimuli can affect circadian functions by modulating the time and pattern of exposure to potent photic time-givers[17]. These around-the-clock active bees do have a functional and entrained circadian clock; nurse bees that are removed from the hive and isolated individually in a constant laboratory environment almost instantly show circadian rhythms with high locomotor activity during the subjective day and relative quiescence during the subjective night[31,34]
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