1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910812980503321

Autore

Page Robert E

Titolo

The spirit of the hive [[electronic resource] ] : the mechanisms of social evolution / / Robert E. Page

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Harvard University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-674-07556-0

0-674-07554-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (240 p.)

Disciplina

595.79/9

Soggetti

Beehives

Honeybee - Behavior

Honeybee - Evolution

Pollen

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- 1. Darwin's Dilemma and the Spirit of the Hive -- 2. What Is the Spirit of the Hive? -- 3. Individual Variation in Behavior -- 4. The Evolution of Polyandry -- 5. The Phenotypic Architecture of Pollen Hoarding -- 6. The Genetic Architecture of Pollen Hoarding -- 7. Reproductive Regulation of Division of Labor -- 8. Developmental Regulation of Reproduction -- 9. The Regulatory Architecture of Pollen Hoarding -- 10. A Crowd of Bees -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Charles Darwin struggled to explain how forty thousand bees working in the dark, seemingly by instinct alone, could organize themselves to construct something as perfect as a honey comb. How do bees accomplish such incredible tasks? Synthesizing the findings of decades of experiments, The Spirit of the Hive presents a comprehensive picture of the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying the division of labor in honey bee colonies and explains how bees' complex social behavior has evolved over millions of years. Robert Page, one of the foremost honey bee geneticists in the world, sheds light on how the coordinated activity of hives arises naturally when worker bees respond to stimuli in their environment. The actions they take in turn alter the



environment and so change the stimuli for their nestmates. For example, a bee detecting ample stores of pollen in the hive is inhibited from foraging for more, whereas detecting the presence of hungry young larvae will stimulate pollen gathering. Division of labor, Page shows, is an inevitable product of group living, because individual bees vary genetically and physiologically in their sensitivities to stimuli and have different probabilities of encountering and responding to them. A fascinating window into self-organizing regulatory networks of honey bees, The Spirit of the Hive applies genomics, evolution, and behavior to elucidate the details of social structure and advance our understanding of complex adaptive systems in nature.