Specialist Bombus vestalis and generalist Bombus bohemicus use different odour cues to find their host Bombus terrestris 

@article{Kreuter2010SpecialistBV,
  title={Specialist Bombus vestalis and generalist Bombus bohemicus use different odour cues to find their host Bombus terrestris
},
  author={Kirsten Kreuter and Robert Twele and Wittko Francke and Manfred Ayasse},
  journal={Animal Behaviour},
  year={2010},
  volume={80},
  pages={297-302}
}
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11 Citations
Background Citations
8
Methods Citations
2
Results Citations
1

11 Citations

A method for year-round rearing of cuckoo bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Bombus subgenus Psithyrus)

A simple method for rearing cuckoo bumblebees (Bombus subgenus Psithyrus) in the laboratory enables a year-round and mass breeding of Psith Cyrus species to facilitate studies of these rare species.

Specific recognition of reproductive parasite workers by nest-entrance guards in the bumble bee Bombus terrestris

Chemical analysis revealed that the cuticular chemical profiles of workers encode information about both their colony membership and their current fertility, therefore providing potential recognition cues for a suitable adjustment of the guards’ defensive decisions, and provides a first piece of empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that an adapted defensive strategy against worker reproductive parasitism exists in B. terrestris colonies.

Nest wax triggers worker reproduction in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris

It is suggested that wax scent enables workers to time their reproduction by providing essential information concerning the social condition of the colony by changing the patterns and amounts of cuticular lipids change considerably during colony development.

The chemical basis of host nest detection and chemical integration in a cuckoo paper wasp

It is demonstrated that CHCs are fundamental in both steps of the host exploitation process, thus confirming their primary role in social insect life and consequently in social parasite–host interactions.

Ecology and Evolution of Cuckoo Bumble Bees

Abstract Most social insect lineages contain socially parasitic cheater species that, rather than produce their own workers, infiltrate the nests of closely related social species and force the hosts…

Bumblebee-mediated pollination of English populations of the Military Orchid (Orchis militaris): its possible relevance to functional morphology, life history and climate change

It is suggested that bumblebees (Bombus spp.) may have become the primary pollinators of the orchid at the site and models of pollination ecology should consider the caste and life history of the relevant insect.

Wax Lipids Signal Nest Identity in Bumblebee Colonies

The findings suggest that wax emits characteristic olfactory profiles that are used by workers to recognize their colony, and that bumblebees were able to discriminate between wax scents from their own and a foreign colony.

Chemical ecology of bumble bees.

The development of new and more sensitive analytical tools and improvements in sociogenetic methods significantly enhanced knowledge about chemical compounds that mediate the regulation of reproduction in the social phase of colony development, about the interactions between host bumble bees and their social parasites, about pheromones involved in mating behavior, as well as about the importance of signals, cues and context-dependent learning in foraging behavior.

Reproductive Dominance Strategies in Insect Social Parasites

This review compares socially parasitic insect lineages to find general trends and build a hypothetical framework for the means by which social parasites achieve reproductive dominance, and highlights how host social organization and social parasite life history traits may impact the way they achieve reproductive supremacy.

Drifting behaviour as an alternative reproductive strategy for social insect workers

It is shown in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris that drifting is a distinct strategy by which fertile workers circumvent competition in their nest and reproduce in foreign colonies, and shows that the drifting of fertile workers reflects complex decision-making processes associated with in-nest reproductive competition.

References

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