Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Mapping the Bumblebee Social Network Across Levels of Organization

The research will use the common eastern bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) to trace the flow of nutritional information throughout the colony. It will integrate methods in behavioral ecology and deep-learning to study the role of colony size, communication, and individual variability on the social network formed following a successful foraging expedition. The research seeks to answer three questions: 1) What are the individual dynamics which underlie bumblebee communication? 2) How does the communication network change with colony size? 3) How does individual variation impact communication? The fellow will utilize a deep-learning pipeline to track bee locations and body parts, generating a multimodal social network. An experiment will monitor network behavior before and after introducing a highly nutritious foraging source to identify key “network archetypes.” The fellow will receive training in analysis of real-time foraging dynamics, naturalistic rearing settings, and mathematical modeling of biological networks. Educational activities include developing biology curricula and courses for incarcerated students across Wisconsin, in collaboration with the UW-Madison Prison Education Initiative, and incorporating findings into outreach events with the UW-Madison Agriculture Institute.