Pattern formation on the combs of honeybees: increasing fitness by coupling self-organization with templates.
Biological patterns are often constructed via a combination of mechanisms including self-organization, templates and recipes. Our understanding of self-organization is becoming increasingly clear, yet how multiple mechanisms work together and what selective advantage they confer over simpler mechanisms is poorly understood. Honeybee (Apis mellifera) combs exhibit a pattern of brood at the bottom, pollen in a band next to it and honey at the top. This study constructs an agent-based model, derived from experimental studies, to determine both how self-organization interacts with two templates and to elucidate a selective basis for the use of multiple mechanisms. The vertical pattern of honey and brood is shown to be dependent on a gravity-based template, while the pollen band is shown to form via the interaction of a queen-based template and self-organization. The study suggests that the selective basis for this complex mechanism may be that colonies have higher growth rates when multiple mechanisms are used as opposed to self-organization alone. As self-organization is used in many contexts in which the addition of supplemental mechanisms could be advantageous, this result may be of general significance to many biological systems.
Johnson
Brian R
BR
Section of Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0116, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USA. b5johnnso@ucsd.edu
D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D006722:Honey; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D011058:Pollen; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012919:Social Behavior
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