Social behaviour and biology of Bumblebees

Bees & Beehive

Supervisor: Mark Brown

Project Summary (MPhil): 

Social behaviour underpins animal societies, and the most complex animal societies to evolve are found in the social insects – ants, bees, termites, and wasps. The success of a social insect colony depends upon social behaviour, where different individuals do different tasks and there is no central organiser.  We use bumblebees to understand who does what, why individuals specialise (more or less) on different tasks, how much flexibility there is in performing different roles, and how this all comes together to produce successful colonies. This MPhil gives the opportunity to co-create your own project in these areas

Type of work:

You will co-create your own research project in collaboration with me and the broader lab group; this will develop your skills in experimental design. You will conduct laboratory research with live bumblebees using behavioural and insect handling techniques; this will develop your laboratory research and project management skills. You will analyse your data, present it in lab meetings, and write up your results; this will develop your statistical, presentation, and scientific writing skills.

Importance of the area of research concerned:

Social insects dominate terrestrial life on earth. Their success is underpinned by their social behaviour. This project will consequently advance our understanding of key biological processes. In addition, bumblebees are essential but declining, wild pollinators – understanding their social behaviour may have direct consequences for maximising the effectiveness of conservation strategies

References:

Zhuang M, Colgan TJ, Guo Y, Zhang Z, Liu F, Xia Z, Dai X, Zhang Z, Li Y, Wang L, Xu J, Guo Y, Qu Y, Yao J, Yang H, Yang F, Li X, Guo J, Brown MJF, Li J (2023) Unexpected worker mating and colony-founding in a superorganism. Nature Communications 14:5499 Special issue on Integrative Analysis of Divison of Labor (2016) Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70(7) https://link.springer.com/journal/265/volumes-and-issues/70-7