James Nieh, PhD - US grants

LAY ABSTRACT
Role of olfactory and acoustic information in the communication of food
location by stingless bees (genus Melipona)
James C. Nieh
NSF Award 0316697
Successful foragers of highly social insects commonly communicate the location
of good food sources to other colony members. In honeybees, such location
communication can occur through the waggle dance, famous because
honeybees encode the distance and direction to a resource in the waggle dance
(referential communication). This degree of directional information is only
matched by human language. Aside from honeybees, the tropical stingless bees
are the only highly social bees, and both groups are closely related. Several
authors have therefore made preliminary studies to see if stingless bees also
have a similar ability to encode and communicate food location. Previously, the
P.I. discovered that one species of stingless bee can communicate 3D food
location and may encode distance and height in sound pulses. Through this
grant, the P.I. will determine, in detail, the role of odor and sound in this
communication system. He will also begin playback experiments designed to test
whether bees can use acoustic information to find a food source at specific 3D
location. This research will increase our understanding of sophisticated animal
communication by exploring a new model of referential communication, the
stingless bees.

0503834/0503468
Cameron/Nye

This U.S.-Mexico award will support a collaborative planning visit and research by Dr. Sydney Cameron of the U. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and Dr. James Nieh of the U. of California-San Diego to Dr. Remy Vandame of the El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Tapachula, Mexico. The researchers intend to develop an international collaboration between two laboratories in the U.S. and one in Mexico to examine acoustical and pheromonal signals in recruitment communication in two different tribes of eusocial bees, Meliponini (stingless bees) and Bombini (Bombus. bumblebees).

The investigators will bring complementary skills to address the problem of understanding the nature and evolution of the complex recruitment systems found in highly social bees, and how they may have evolved from simpler ancestral systems. The foreign counterpart Vandame brings a wealth of knowledge about the foraging ecology of stingless bees in Mexico, Nieh is an expert on stingless bee recruitment communication, and Cameron is a leader in molecular phylogenetics of social bees, and also specializes in the behavior of tropical bumblebees. Analysis of data will be distributed between the labs in Mexico and San Diego, using the 30 Terabyte data storage facility provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center. The researchers will each bring a graduate student to the collaborative effort and their experience in fostering communication and collaboration with scientific researchers and students from Mexico and Latin American countries will contribute to the broader impacts of the project.

This research is the first detailed investigation of olfactory eavesdropping, espionage, in stingless bees. It evaluates how such espionage occurs in the field for natural food sources and how strategies such as changing odor-trail length may provide counter-espionage protection. The ultimate goal is to determine whether olfactory espionage may have driven the evolution of concealed symbolic communication inside the nest. For example, honeybees can encode the distance and direction to food through a special waggle dance performed inside the nest. Some stingless bees species may encode distance through sound pulses given inside the nest. Why did such sophisticated communication evolve, given that most social insects rely mainly on odor communication? Olfactory espionage may have played a role, driving communication into the protected fortress of the nest.

Integral to this project is the goal of providing educational opportunities for San Diego-area minority and underprivileged high-school students, undergraduates from two-year and four-year colleges, and a graduate student as participants in a research experience that will teach the scientific method at different levels of sophistication, and enhance student teaching abilities. This will be accomplished through coursework, the ORBS (Opportunities for Research in Behavioral Sciences) Program developed by the P.I. to involve students and faculty at high schools and community colleges, and the e-lab. The ORBS program addresses the specific needs of minority high-school and community-college students while partnering them with four-year university students as models for their goal of advancing to higher education.

Intellectual Merit: The research will increase our understanding of the role of eavesdropping and espionage in the evolution of animal communication. It begins to examine the question of whether espionage led to the evolution of communication systems incorporating counter-espionage strategies.

Broader Impacts: The project will integrate research and education by examining the evolution of olfactory eavesdropping while providing graduate training, supporting undergraduate university, community-college, and high-school science education, and increasing minority participation in the Behavioral Sciences. Funds will (1) support one graduate student and that student's progress towards a scientific career, (2) train young Brazilian scientists, (3) support ORBS and enable students to acquire field experience and to present their results at conferences, and (4) support a yearly ORBS symposium and associated publication. This symposium provides an annual venue in which San Diego minority science-education programs will meet to share resources, recruit ORBS participants, and foster regional interest in the Behavioral Sciences.

Bee pollination plays a major role in maintaining the plant diversity of tropical ecosystems. Worldwide, agriculture also relies upon bee pollination, which plays a central role in many economically important crops. Increased destruction of bee-friendly habitat and declines in honey bee populations have led to interest in other bee pollinators, such as stingless bees, which have a key role in preserving native plant diversity and agriculture. However, little is known about how stingless bees influence plant gene flow by where they choose to forage. In particular, the role of competition, aggression, and interceptive eavesdropping (the ability of some stingless bee species to intercept foraging information intended for nestmates) on flower visitation and pollination are not well understood. The researchers will combine field studies of stingless bee foraging and mathematical modeling to determine how these foraging patterns vary with foraging strategy and how competition among stingless bees can change foraging patterns. Their results will increase our understanding of how interceptive eavesdropping shapes bee foraging and contribute to mathematical models useful for preserving native plant diversity and the management of these alternative agricultural pollinators. The research will also allow minority and underprivileged students to gain direct field research experience and provide outreach teaching the importance of native pollinators and the scientific method through the web and science workshops.