Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
10
A Crowd of Bees
Charles Darwin marveled at how honey bees can construct a wax comb
even though each bee has only her instincts and limited information
about her own small local environment. h e end product is, however,
in his mind nearly perfect. Maurice Maeterlinck, 50 years later, pon-
dered the source of the organized social behavior and proposed a mys-
tical “spirit of the hive,” wondering where it resides. In this topic, I have
shown that the stimulus-response relationships of individual bees, cou-
pled with the ef ects of the behavior of individuals on the environment
they share with nestmates, provide the basic mechanism for social be-
havior. I call it the spirit of the hive, solving one part of Maeterlinck's
puzzle. Complex social organization evolves by tuning the stimulus-
response relationships of individuals.
Social behavior is woven from the fabric of ancient genetic and phys-
iological regulatory systems derived from solitary insects. When we
were selecting for a social phenotype, the amount of stored pollen, we
af ected a network of genetic and phenotypic traits that are linked
within and among levels (Figure 6.5). Selection for pollen hoarding re-
sulted in changes in the frequencies of alternative genes or genetic reg-
ulatory systems, demonstrated by mapped QTLs. h ey in turn af ected
fundamental larval developmental processes, which resulted in changes
in reproductive anatomy and physiology and probably changes in the
evolutionarily ancient insulin-insulin-like-signaling pathways that af-
fect development and behavior. h e ultimate target, however, is the
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