Chemical compounds of the foraging recruitment pheromone in bumblebees |
| |
Authors: | Angeles Mena Granero José M Guerra Sanz Francisco J Egea Gonzalez José L Martinez Vidal Anna Dornhaus Junaid Ghani Ana Roldán Serrano Lars Chittka |
| |
Institution: | (1) CIFA La Mojonera (IFAPA); Aut. Mediterráneo 420, 04745 La Mojonera, Almería, Spain;(2) Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of Almería, 04120 Almería, Spain;(3) Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, BS8 1UG Bristol, U.K.;(4) Biological Sciences, Queen Mary College, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, U.K. |
| |
Abstract: | 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. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 PubMed SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|