Chemical compounds of the foraging recruitment pheromone in bumblebees.
When the frenzied and irregular food-recruitment dances of bumblebees were first discovered, it was thought that they might represent an evolutionary prototype to the honeybee waggle dance. It later emerged that the primary function of the bumblebee dance was the distribution of an alerting pheromone. Here, we identify the chemical compounds of the bumblebee recruitment pheromone and their behaviour effects. The presence of two monoterpenes and one sesquiterpene (eucalyptol, ocimene and farnesol) in the nest airspace and in the tergal glands increases strongly during foraging. Of these, eucalyptol has the strongest recruitment effect when a bee nest is experimentally exposed to it. Since honeybees use terpenes for marking food sources rather than recruiting foragers inside the nest, this suggests independent evolutionary roots of food recruitment in these two groups of bees.
Granero
Angeles Mena
AM
CIFA La Mojonera (IFAPA); Aut. Mediterráneo 420, 04745, La Mojonera, Almería, Spain.
Sanz
José M Guerra
JM
Gonzalez
Francisco J Egea
FJ
Vidal
José L Martinez
JL
Dornhaus
Anna
A
Ghani
Junaid
J
Serrano
Ana Roldán
AR
Chittka
Lars
L
D000821:Animal Feed; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D010675:Pheromones / Q000502:physiology*
D010675:Pheromones