Scientists at the University of Bristol studying honeybees, bumblebees and stingless bees found that variation in communication strategies are explained by differences in the habitats that bees inhabit and differences in the social lifestyle such colony size and nesting habits.
The findings, published today in PNAS, reveal that anthropogenic change, such as habitat conversion, climate change and the use of agrochemicals, are altering the world bees occupy, and it is becoming increasingly clearer that this affects communication both directly and indirectly, for example by affecting food source availability, social interactions among nestmates and their cognitive functions.
How bees adapt their foraging and communication strategies to cope with these threats is a new and pressing area in bee behavioural and conservation research.
Paper: Alves DA et al. (2023). Diverse communication strategies in bees as a window into adaptations to an unpredictable world. PNAS.