Social and individual responses to novel odor stimuli between honey bee genotypes

Odor processing is an essential part of social organization in social insects, and no eusocial system is better studied than the honey bee (Apis mellifera). Nevertheless, we have yet to understand how social and individual bees respond to novel odors from different genotypes. To accomplish this, we will compare honey bees from stress-susceptible, domesticated colonies with honeybees from stress-tolerant genotypes. For the latter, we will use a population of locally occurring survivor honey bees. Compared to domesticated honey bees, survivor bees are genetically far more diverse and have been under continuous natural selection to manage environmental stressors including extreme urbanization, harsh climatic conditions, and intense agriculture. However, little is known about how these genotypes differ in their chemical responsiveness. Here we leverage this genetic differentiation to examine individual and group responses to known and novel volatiles. We exposed both individual and small groups of bees to chemical compounds and quantified their behavioral responses using both machine vision tracking and manual assessment. Our approach allows us to identify how stress-susceptible and stress-tolerant genotypes differentially respond to novel odor stressors.