SCHOOL OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
2006 HONOURS PROJECTS IN THE SOCIAL INSECTS LAB
Potential Supervisors: Ben Oldroyd, Madeleine Beekman, Mary Myerscough (Maths), Graham Thompson, Nate Lo and Bill Hughes (and combinations thereof).
We invite students interested in evolutionary and population genetics, behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology and entomology to consider projects in our lab. We focus on studies in social insects, but students interested in developing projects in related areas such as conservation genetics are encouraged to discuss their interests with us. We are also interested in co-supervising genetic aspects of any ecology/behavioural projects undertaken in other labs.
We promote a supportive and friendly environment. We have a weekly lab meeting (at the Coffee Roaster) in which all lab members participate. We encourage Honours students to publish their work and we pay for their attendance at conferences. Most of our Honours students have published senior-authored papers. Most of these have been in top journals as you can see from the list below. A refereed publication is very helpful for acquiring an Australian Post Graduate Award.
Papers arising from Honours projects in Social Insects Lab during the last 5 years
Beekman M, Martin CG & Oldroyd BP. 2004 Similar policing rates of eggs laid by virgin and mated honey-bee queens. Naturwissenschaften 91: 598-601.
Cameron EC, Franck P, Oldroyd BP (2004) Genetic structure of nest aggregations and drone congregations of the south-east Asian stingless bee Trigona collina. Mol. Ecol. 13:2357-2364
Franck P, Cameron E, Good G, Rasplus J-Y, Oldroyd BP (2004) Nest architecture and genetic differentiation in a species complex of Australian stingless bees. Mol. Ecol. 13:2317-2331
Martin CG, Oldroyd BP & Beekman M. (2004) Differential reproductive success among subfamilies in queenless honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 56(1): 42-49.
Ashe A, Oldroyd BP (2003) Genetic control of caste in harvester ants. Trends Ecol. Evol. 17:448-449
Halling LA, Oldroyd BP (2003) Do policing honeybee workers target eggs in drone comb? Ins. Soc. 28:233-238
Dampney JR, Barron AB, Oldroyd BP (2002) Measuring the cost of worker reproduction in honeybees: work tempo in an 'anarchistic' line. Apidologie 35: 83-88.
Dampney JR, Barron AB, Oldroyd BP (2002) Policing of adult honey bees with activated ovaries is error prone. Ins. Soc. 49: 270-274
Halling LA, Oldroyd BP, Wattanachaiyingcharoen W, Barron AB, Nanork P, Wongsiri S (2001) Worker policing in the bee Apis florea. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 49:509-513
You will learn a lot in our lab. We have excellent molecular equipment, a fully equipped apiary, a new observation hive room, nice field-work facilities and even a bee truck with crane! There are currently one senior research fellow and three post doctoral fellows in the lab. Our support staff include a full time beekeeper and a full time molecular biologist. The support staff are there to help you get the best possible training and a productive year.
We have strong collaborations with the Visual Sciences group at ANU, the Bee Biology Research Group at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and with the Social Insect group at Sheffield University. Honours students are encouraged to be involved in these collaborations.
For further background on potential projects, please visit our web site at:
http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Social_InsectsLab/Social_InsectsLab.htm
Also feel free to drop into the lab (Room 245 in Macleay) or our offices at any time. Talk to your demonstrators, Emilie or Nadine for a student-orientated perspective.
NB: 2006 will continue to be a particularly exciting time to be a researcher in honey bee genetics because the complete sequence of the honeybee genome is now on line courtesy of the Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium (see http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu/projects /honeybee/). Our lab is extremely well placed to take advantage of this new information to push the field of behavioural genetics forward.
PROJECTS OFFERED IN 2006
General note: all field-based projects need to start in second semester.
1. Anarchy in the beehive
By several years of selective breeding, our laboratory has developed a line of honey bees in which workers lay eggs at high frequency. We call these bees anarchistic. Anarchistic bees, therefore, do precisely the opposite thing to ordinary honey bees, providing us with an experimental opportunity to study how sterility is enforced in ordinary bees. The topic of worker sterility is of great theoretical interest and a multitude of experiments remain to be done with these bees, ranging from highly molecular laboratory-based studies to behavioural or manipulative field-based studies. Our laboratory is unique in the world in having access to these mutant bee stocks, and this provides the opportunity for some really groundbreaking work by motivated students with an interest in genetical aspects of animal behaviour. Possibilities include the identification of genes controlling the expression of worker sterility or anarchy. Thus, this project is likely to involve the use of genomic techniques such as differential display, Northern blotting and cDNA microarrays. Other possibilities, depending on the student’s interests, could include behavioural studies on the process of colony social breakdown once worker egg laying begins, or biochemical studies on the pheromonal signals that affect reproductive behaviour in workers.
Techniques. Some or all of: beekeeping, behavioural analysis, PCR, use of automated DNA analyser, differential display, real time PCR, microsatellites, microarrays, RNA interference and pedigree analysis.
Reference: Whitfield (2002).
2. How do honeybee swarms know where to go?
Ever wondered how a flock of birds or a school of fish stay together and move as one? If you have, then you’ve only been thinking about a relatively easy problem. Try honeybee swarms!
Swarms are formed as part of the reproductive cycle of honeybee colonies. When a colony has grown to a substantial size, it rears daughter queens and splits itself. The half that leaves is called the swarm.
During its homeless stage, the swarm forms a cluster on a branch of a tree or on a building. Scout bees explore the neighborhood in search for a new home. When they have found a suitable new nest-site, they return to the swarm and perform recruitment dances to try and convince other bees of the quality of potential new nest-site they have found. Different scouts find different potential nest-sites and advertise these. Nevertheless, ultimate the swarm chooses only one, lifts off and flies towards its new chosen home.
How does the swarm move as a group to the new nest-site? A swarm comprises about 10,000 bees but only 5% of the bees have visited the new home prior to lift off. Somehow these bees have to direct the swarm towards the new nest-site.
This project aims at understanding how a few informed bees transfer information on the direction of the new nest-site to other bees in the swarm.
Techniques. Beekeeping and behavioural observations. Field work needs to be done outside Sydney.
Reference: Janson et al. (2005); Beekman et al (2005).
3. Can the European honey bee Apis mellifera talk to the Asian hive bee A. cerana?
Both the European and Asian honey bee ‘talk’ to their fellow colony members by means of the famous waggle dance. The honey bees use this language to give their nest mates information about the location of profitable food sources: a patch of highly rewarding flowers. Even though the dance language is very similar in all 9 honey bee species known so far, each species’ language is slightly different. This difference is most pronounced when the bees communicate the location of a source which is close (<50 m or so) to the colony.
This slight difference in the dance language opens the interesting possibility that one can study the effect of ‘misunderstanding’ the dance language on the foraging efficiency of honey bees. How much ‘misunderstanding’ can a honey bee colony suffer before they find themselves in a Babylonian state?
This project will combine the bees of two species of honey bees: the European and the Asian hive bee and study the interactions between foragers of the two species. Related projects: project 4 and 5.
Techniques. Beekeeping and behavioural observations. Field work needs to be done in Thailand. Does not need to start in second semester.
4. Dancing for nearby nest sites
After a honey bee colony has formed a swarm (see project 2), the bees need to find themselves a new home. Honey bees not only use the dance language to inform nest mates about the location of good food sources, but the waggle dance is also used to tell fellow nest mates where a new potential home is located. Interestingly, honey bees are not very good at telling their nest mates the exact location of either a food source or a new nest site when the advertised site is nearby, at a maximum distance of 50 m or so. This is not so much a problem when the bees use the waggle dance to instruct nest mates where to find forage (as most foragers will find a nice food source that it very nearby even when they do not know exactly where it is), but it is a problem when the dancing bee needs to tell the other bees about the location of a new home. Does this mean that the bees have a different way of communicating the location of a new nest site that is very close to the swarm? Answering this question will be the focus of this project.
Techniques. Beekeeping and behavioural observations. Field work needs to be done at ‘Warrah’.
5. Finding the genes that control the dance language and hygienic behaviour
The dance language is innate, and must therefore be encoded in the genes of every worker bee. Understanding how instructions in DNA are translated into a symbolic language is a fascinating question. Hygienic behaviour of honey bees was the first behaviour shown to be inherited in a Mendelian manner.
In this project you will attempt to show the precise DNA sequence that controls an important aspect of the dance dialect or hygienic behaviour. We are currently mapping the honey bee genome in an attempt to locate regions that have genes that control these fascinating behaviours. Together with the new honey bee genome we hope to make fantastic progress on the dance language in 2006.
Techniques: PCR, sequencing, bioinformatics, real time PCR, RNA interference, gene silencing.
6. The distribution of the reproductive parasite Wolbachia in termites: from individuals, to colonies, to populations
Wolbachia is a genus of maternally-inherited intracellular bacteria which is found in up to 70% of all arthropods. These bacteria cause a variety of remarkable reproductive manipulations to their hosts, including male-killing, feminization of genetic males, parthenogenesis and cytoplasmic incompatibility. Wolbachia are also found in filarial nematodes, where they act as obligate mutualists. This wide range of host-interactions - as well as their potential for novel approaches to pest control and fighting diseases such as malaria, river blindness and elephantitis - has led to an explosion of interest in these bacteria in recent years.
In this project you will investigate a novel lineage of Wolbachia found in termites, which are social insects of considerable economic importance in Australia. Molecular techniques will be used to examine how these bacteria are distributed within termite colonies and populations. Like males in general, sterile workers in social insect colonies represent a “dead-end” to Wolbachia. Is the bacterium more likely to be found in reproducing individuals? Or, does the bacterium’s presence in foraging workers enhance its horizontal transmission? Have particular Wolbachia strains swept quickly through termite populations, carrying mitochondria with them, as has been found for mosquitoes and flies? To address these questions, molecular markers and population genetic methods will be employed.
7. Annotating the bee genome
Attention Bioinformatics students!
Although the bee genome is on line, the task of identifying open reading frames and annotating the genes is only just beginning. A multitude of gene families are unexplored. Your task would be to undertake the annotation of a gene family of the honey bee. This involves establishing homologies with genes in other species, particularly Drosophila and the mosquito, and creating appropriate phylogenies and comparative analyses. Your chance to become immortalized by naming some new genes, and quite possibly to author a paper in Nature.
Unlike honeybees, most species of social bee are stingless. These, predominantly tropical bees, share many life-history characteristics with honey bees. Quite apart from their lack of sting making them somewhat more pleasant to work with, the two groups differ in that stingless bee queens mate only once, whereas honeybee queens mate many times. This difference is likely to have important implications for the way honeybee and stingless bee colonies can deal with the similar problems that they face, and makes stingless bees a potentially useful model for examining the evolution of multiple mating by females.
The project will involve creating composite stingless bee colonies of differing genetic diversity and recording their subsequent fitness to establish whether genetic diversity has any benefits. Genetic techniques will also be used to examine whether genotype influences the tasks that the bees engage in. This project is available only in the first semester.
Techniques: behavioural analysis, beekeeping, PCR, microsatellites
Reference: Baer and Schmid-Hempel (1999)
9. Do honeybee queens know how often they’ve had sex?
Honeybee queens mate with an average of twelve males during between one and a few short mating flights. The sperm from these matings has to last the queen for her entire life. Mating with enough males is therefore critical to her in order that she is able to store sufficient sperm and also that she gain the other probable advantages of mating multiply. On the other hand, mating is a costly business for a honeybee queen, so she doesn’t want to do it any more than is necessary. It would therefore make sense for a queen to only go on further mating flights if she failed to obtain sufficient matings on her earlier flight(s). However it is unclear whether she knows this and a previous study with a small number of queens failed to find any increase in mating frequency with number of flights.
The project will involve observing and controlling the mating flights of honeybee queens, establishing the quantity and quality of sperm they return with, and carrying out the genetic analysis of their offspring to calculate their mating frequencies. Fieldwork may be conducted in Australia or possibly in the UK.
Reference: Tarpy & Page (2000)
Techniques: behavioural analysis, sperm analysis, PCR, microsatellites
10. The benefits of genetic diversity for disease resistance
By mating with multiple males, honeybee queens produce colonies that consist of a genetically diverse population of workers. It has been suggested this may improve the colonies resistance to disease. Social insect colonies should be especially prone to disease because of the dense aggregations of individuals within them. If these individuals are very highly related, as is the case if the mother queen mated with only a single male, then a disease will spread relatively easily through them and be likely to infect the whole colony. It will be a lot harder for diseases to spread within a genetically diverse colony and there will be a much greater likelihood of at least part of the colony avoiding infection. However evidence for this effect is still lacking. The project will involve examining the level of genetic variation for disease resistance (the key prerequisite for genetic diversity for disease resistance to work) and how relatedness affects disease transmission. If desired, part of the work may be conducted in the UK.
Reference: Palmer and Oldroyd (2003), Tarpy (2003)
Techniques: microbiology, beekeeping, PCR, microsatellites
11. Heat tolerance in honey bees
As you may recall from your population genetics prac in second year, the malate dehydrogenase enzyme (MDH) of honey bees has three common alleles, or electromorphs (‘fast’, ‘medium’ and ‘slow’). The medium allele is common in cold-climate populations, and the protein it encodes has been shown to be less stable than the other alleles when heated in vitro. Moreover, MDH allelic frequencies show geographic clines on three continents, strongly suggesting that allele frequency is under environmentally-induced selective pressure with the medium allele being favoured in cold climates, and the heat resistant alleles being favoured in warm climates.
The project would involve a search for the selective benefits of the medium allele in cold climates. The project would suit a student with a good biochemical background, and an interest in population genetics.
References: Cornuet et al. (1995), Hatty and Oldroyd (1999).
Techniques: enzyme characterization, population modeling.
There are 9 species of honey bee, and to date we do not have a complete molecular phylogeny. This is problematic, because without a decent phylogeny we can’t understand such important mechanisms as the evolution of the dance language. Your task: obtain a complete phylogeny of the honey bees based on several genes.
Techniques: DNA sequencing, phylogeny reconstruction, comparative analysis.
13. Phylogenetics of Australian Coptotermes termites
The genus Coptotermes contains the most important pest termite species in Australia, causing several hundred million dollars of damage annually. Yet, our understanding of how many species exist, and how they are related to each other, is very poor. This information is likely to be of importance for future pest-control strategies. It is also of interest for understanding when the genus first entered Australia, and how different lineages evolved into mound and tree-nesters. This project will involve the sequencing of mitochondrial and nuclear genes from Coptotermes representatives from all over Australia, and analysis of these genes to create the first robust phylogeny of these species. You will be able to put into practice what you learnt in 3rd year Bioinformatics. It will involve collaboration with scientists from CSIRO in Canberra, and is highly likely to lead to the discovery of new species of these termites.
Arathi HS, Spivak M (2001) Influence of colony genotypic composition on the performance of hygienic behaviour in the honeybee, Apis mellifera L. Animal Behaviour 62:57-66
Baer B, Schmid-Hempel P (1999) Experimental variation in polyandry affects parasite loads and fitness in a bumble-bee. Nature 397:151-154
Beekman M, Fathke RL & Seeley TD. 2005 How does an informed minority of scouts guide a honey bee swarm as it flies to its new home? Animal Behaviour: accepted
Cornuet J-M, Oldroyd BP, Crozier RH (1995) Unequal thermostability of alleleic forms of malate dehydrogenase in honey bees. Journal of Apicultural Research 34:45-47
Hatty S, Oldroyd BP (1999) Evidence for temperature-dependent selection for malate dehydrogenase allele frequencies in honeybee populations. Journal of Heredity 90:565-568
Janson S, Middendorf M & Beekman M. 2005 Honey bee swarms: How do scouts guide a swarm of uninformed bees? Animal Behaviour: in press
Myerscough M, Oldroyd BP (2004) Simulation models of the role of genetic variability in social insect task allocation. Insectes Sociaux 51:146-152
Palmer K, Oldroyd BP (2003) Evidence for intra-colonial genetic variance in resistance to American foulbrood of honey bees (Apis mellifera): Further support for the parasite/pathogen hypothesis for the evolution of polyandry. Naturwissenschaften 90:265-268
Tarpy DR (2003) Genetic diversity within honeybee colonies prevents severe infections and promotes colony growth. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270:99-103
Tarpy DR, Page RE (2000) No behavioral control over mating frequency in queen honey bees (Apis mellifera L.): Implications for the evolution of extreme polyandry. American Naturalist 155:820-827
Whitfield J (2002) The police state. Nature 416:782-784