Automated monitoring reveals extreme interindividual variation and plasticity in honeybee foraging activity levels

• Published in: Animal behaviour Vol. 95; pp. 41 - 48
• Main Authors: Tenczar, Paul, Lutz, Claudia C., Rao, Vikyath D., Goldenfeld, Nigel, Robinson, Gene E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2014; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Ltd
• Subjects: Animal behavior; Apis mellifera; Bees; elitism; flight; Flight behavior; Forage; foraging; Foraging behavior; honey bees; honeybee; insect castes; insect colonies; Insects; monitoring; Observational studies; plasticity; Radio frequency identification; RFID; social factors; social insects; Apis mellifera; foraging; plasticity; RFID; radio frequency identification; honeybee; elitism

Workers in many eusocial insect species show a phenomenon sometimes referred to as ‘elitism’, in which a small proportion of individual workers engaged in a task perform a disproportionately large fraction of the work achieved by the colony as a whole. This phenomenon has not been well studied for f...