Abstract
Sociability, mass response to threat, food production and food sharing and an adaptable communication system are a suite of traits involved in the evolution of complex society in animals. Cycles of interaction characterize members of such societies and those of species in association that can affect disease structure in time and virulence. Colony Collapse Disorder (in North America, Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome, or HBDS elsewhere) shows similarity to a number of mass behavioural responses in other social animals, especially in ants. A number of questions regarding the cause of CCD continues to make progress in fighting the disease difficult. Here information is provided that may result in an isolation of factors to identify the syndrome of effects that lead to the disease, based on studies of disease avoidance and illness behaviour in other animal species. Most of the work to date to discover a cause has focused on a direct relationship between a pathogen or parasite or environmental condition and the Disorder. Dysfunctional mass behaviour is even seen in humans, as during the Black Plague. Disease avoidance is an important survival tactic for many animals and if the mechanism is modified by a pathogen or toxin unusual outcomes may result. In complex animal societies the opportunity for other forms of disruption of social life are numerous.
Highlights
Avoiding disease certainly has value to the individual in escaping pain, suffering and death
Some chemicals have been found to affect the behaviour of vertebrates in uniform ways while epigenetic effects have been implicated in disease differences in human twins, epigenetic changes are associated with aging and the onset of characteristics of senescence could be a pathway to explain Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in bees along with the production of other disease mimicking states induced in different genomes of bee populations
Epigenetic variations may be spreading through bee populations by several environmental stresses
Summary
Avoiding disease certainly has value to the individual in escaping pain, suffering and death. Various philosophers and scientists have put forth proposals where the basis of human solidarity lies in similar scenarios, for example, where social displays are “epidiectic” serving as feedback to adjust or restore the balance between population density and consumable resources 43 through processes of group selection 19 and cooperation , others have produced more comprehensive, but elusive explanations, such as forms of social effervescence and mass bonding which is thought to be the foundation of complex society. Even these seem to have parallels in animal societies, as when. Heinze and Walter propose 55 that species with smaller colonies can leave a nest without contaminating other nest mates, while in larger colonies specialized waste collecting workers function to effectively remove moribund ants from the more complex situations
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