ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Solitary bees reduce investment in communication compared with their social relatives.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Viral influence on chemical communication in eusocial insects: insights and emerging research priorities.Journal of insect science (Online) · 2026Review
- The Evolution of Bees: Insights from 'Omic Studies.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Olfactory performance explains duality of antennal architectural designs in Lepidoptera.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Sexual dimorphism and morphological integration in the orchid bee brain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Salient Aroma Hypothesis: host plant specialization is linked with plant volatile availability in Lepidoptera.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Exploring the genetics of social behaviour in C. calcarata.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sociality does not predict signal complexity in response to playback in apteronotid weakly electric fishes.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2025Article
- Repeated Shifts in Sociality Are Associated With Fine-tuning of Highly Conserved and Lineage-Specific Enhancers in a Socially Flexible Bee.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Chemical and transcriptomic diversity do not correlate with ascending levels of social complexity in the insect order Blattodea.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Subtle morphological changes in the visual and antennal sensory system of bees and wasps across an urbanisation gradient.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Hymenoptera and biomimetic surfaces: insights and innovations.Beilstein journal of nanotechnology · 2024Review
- Neuroendocrine mechanisms contributing to the coevolution of sociality and communication.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- Putting hornets on the genomic map.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Convergent and complementary selection shaped gains and losses of eusociality in sweat bees.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Gut microbiota variation of a tropical oil-collecting bee species far exceeds that of the honeybee.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Genomic signatures of recent convergent transitions to social life in spiders.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Signatures of Positive Selection in the Genome ofLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Coevolution of social and communicative complexity in lemurs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Sensory plasticity in a socially plastic bee.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Social divergence: molecular pathways underlying castes and longevity in a facultatively eusocial small carpenter bee.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Social animals must communicate to define group membership and coordinate social organization. For social insects, communication is predominantly mediated through chemical signals, and as social complexity increases, so does the requirement for a greater diversity of signals. This relationship is particularly true for advanced eusocial insects, including ants, bees, and wasps, whose chemical communication systems have been well-characterized. However, we know surprisingly little about how these communication systems evolve during the transition between solitary and group living. Here, we demonstrate that the sensory systems associated with signal perception are evolutionarily labile. In particular, we show that differences in signal production and perception are tightly associated with changes in social behavior in halictid bees. Our results suggest that social species require a greater investment in communication than their solitary counterparts and that species that have reverted from eusociality to solitary living have repeatedly reduced investment in these potentially costly sensory perception systems.
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