Abstract
Honeybee Apis mellifera swarms form large congested tree-hanging clusters made solely of bees attached to each other1. How these structures are maintained under the influence of dynamic mechanical forcing is unknown. To address this, we created pendant clusters and subject them to dynamic loads of varying orientation, amplitude, frequency and duration. We find that horizontally shaken clusters adapt by spreading out to form wider, flatter cones that recover their original shape when unloaded. Measuring the response of a cluster to an impulsive pendular excitation shows that flattened cones deform less and relax faster than the elongated ones (that is, they are more stable). Particle-based simulations of a passive assemblage suggest a behavioural hypothesis: individual bees respond to local variations in strain by moving up the strain gradient, which is qualitatively consistent with our observations of individual bee movement during dynamic loading. The simulations also suggest that vertical shaking will not lead to significant differential strains and thus no shape adaptation, which we confirmed experimentally. Together, our findings highlight how a super-organismal structure responds to dynamic loading by actively changing its morphology to improve the collective stability of the cluster at the expense of increasing the average mechanical burden of an individual.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by funding from the US NSF PoLS grant 1606895. We thank the Mahadevan laboratory for discussions and comments.
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O.P., J.M.P. and L.M. conceived of the research study; O.P., J.M.P., M.K.S. and L.M. designed the experiments, O.P., J.M.P. and M.K.S. performed the experiments; O.P. analysed the data with the help of J.M.P; O.P. and L.M. conceived of the behavioural rule and designed the simulations; O.P. carried out the simulations; O.P., J.M.P. and L.M. wrote the paper; L.M. supervised the project.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information, Supplementary Figures 1–6, Supplementary Tables 1–3
Supplementary Video 1
Honeybee cluster in the wind
Supplementary Video 2
Time-lapse of horizontal shaking experiment
Supplementary Video 3
Before/after horizontal shaking experiment—response to continuous shaking
Supplementary Video 4
Before/after horizontal shaking experiment—response to a single sharp shake
Supplementary Video 5
Tracking individual bees during horizontal shaking experiment
Supplementary Video 6
Passive simulations to extract local strains
Supplementary Video 7
Active simulations
Supplementary Video 8
Active simulations
Supplementary Video 9
Honeybee cluster breakage
Supplementary Video 10
Before/after vertical shaking experiment—response to a single sharp shake
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Peleg, O., Peters, J.M., Salcedo, M.K. et al. Collective mechanical adaptation of honeybee swarms. Nature Phys 14, 1193–1198 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0262-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0262-1
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