Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Death recognition by undertaker bees

View ORCID ProfilePing Wen
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.05.978262
Ping Wen
1CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan Province, 650223, China
2Center for Plant Ecology, Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Ping Wen
  • For correspondence: wenping@xtbg.ac.cn
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Dead conspecifics removal is important of being social to avoid pathogen transmission, which resulted in the evolution of a specific caste of undertaking workers in all hives bee species. However, it is mysterious that how the undertakers distinguish death and life instantly. Through integrative studies of behavioural tests and chemical analyses, a novel mechanism for dead conspecifics recognition is found in the Asian bee Apis cerana cerana Fabricius. The bees detect quickly the death of conspecifics based on decreased cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) emissions, caused by the cooling of the dead bee. Specifically, with the decline of body temperature in death, the CHC emission was reduced. Undertakers perceived the major CHCs. Addition of synthetic CHCs, followed by heating, inhibited undertaking behaviour. Among these CHCs, heptacosane and nonacosane are the major compounds in a natural bee hive, providing a continuous signal associated with life. Via changing the vapour pressure then the ratio of emitted compounds encoding the physiological status of signal sender, insect chemical communication can be finely tuned by body temperature. This straightforward death recognition mechanism requiring little cost can be universal in animal living in social groups, especially in the social insects. Body temperature affected behaviour can response to increasing frequency of extreme weathers in global climate change, which help explain the recent worldwide bee health problem.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted March 05, 2020.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Death recognition by undertaker bees
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Death recognition by undertaker bees
Ping Wen
bioRxiv 2020.03.05.978262; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.05.978262
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Death recognition by undertaker bees
Ping Wen
bioRxiv 2020.03.05.978262; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.05.978262

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Animal Behavior and Cognition
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4091)
  • Biochemistry (8773)
  • Bioengineering (6487)
  • Bioinformatics (23356)
  • Biophysics (11758)
  • Cancer Biology (9155)
  • Cell Biology (13257)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7418)
  • Ecology (11376)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15095)
  • Genetics (10404)
  • Genomics (14014)
  • Immunology (9126)
  • Microbiology (22071)
  • Molecular Biology (8783)
  • Neuroscience (47395)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1421)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2482)
  • Physiology (3705)
  • Plant Biology (8055)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1433)
  • Synthetic Biology (2211)
  • Systems Biology (6017)
  • Zoology (1250)