title: Pulsed mass recruitment by a stingless bee, Trigona hyalinata.
abstract: Research on bee communication has focused on the ability of the highly social bees, stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) and honeybees (Apidae, Apini), to communicate food location to nest-mates. Honeybees can communicate food location through the famous waggle dance. Stingless bees are closely related to honeybees and communicate food location through a variety of different mechanisms, many of which are poorly understood. We show that a stingless bee, Trigona hyalinata, uses a pulsed mass-recruitment system that is highly focused in time and space. Foragers produced an ephemeral, polarized, odour trail consisting of mandibular gland secretions. Surprisingly, the odour trail extended only a short distance away from the food source, instead of providing a complete trail between the nest and the food source (as has been described for other stingless bees). This abbreviated trail may represent an intermediate strategy between full-trail marking, found in some stingless bees, and odour marking of the food alone, found in stingless bees and honeybees.
authors.affiliation: Section of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, MC#0116, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. jnieh@ucsd.edu
authors.forename: James C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Nieh
authors.forename: Felipe A L
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Contrera
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nogueira-Neto
mesh_terms: D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D001938:Brazil; D004463:Ecology; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D009812:Odorants; D010675:Pheromones / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D010675:Pheromones