Drivers of social thermoregulation in honey bees

Social insects are incredibly resilient to changing environmental conditions. This is likely because of their ability to integrate multiple modes of information. Collective behavioral responses to changing temperatures require effective reception and integration of both social and ecological information. As such, we use honey bee thermoregulation to more deeply understand how animal groups behave collectively. Honey bees perform a social thermoregulatory behavior called fanning. Honey bees must maintain 34°C in their colony, or risk death of their developing brood. To cool their colony, honey bees fan their wings to circulate air. Fanning is a social behavior: single bees rarely fan, while groups of 10 bees fan more and at ideal temperatures. When honey bee groups can’t interact, they are less likely to fan. Here, we present how social and thermal information interact to shape the fanning response. Specifically, we model how thermal response thresholds are modulated by the social environment. Then we identify how social interactions modulate the fanning response by changing the environment in which bees interact and evaluate their interaction networks. As we work to define the mechanisms that drive the collective fanning response, we are able to identify general rules of resiliency in social dynamics. Overall, we aim to develop generalizable hypotheses to explore dynamics in all societies.