Collaboration between subgroups: how interactions between different classes of bees lead to colony-wide collective decisions.
by
James Edwards
University Of Sydney

Collective decisions are more than the sum of individual decisions; they also emerge from interactions amongst individuals and even, at higher scales, from the interactions between subgroups. For colonies of the honey bee Apis mellifera, nectar foraging is controlled by factors operating at both the individual scale and the subgroup scale. A model will be presented that incorporates the different participants in the formation of the foraging collective decision, and I will use it to show which aspect of the decision is influenced by which participant, and why this is important to the colony.

Date received: November 26, 2009