UC San Diego

The stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) have evolved sophisticated communication systems that allow foragers to recruit nestmates to good resources. Over the past 50 years, a growing body of research has shown that foragers can communicate three-dimensional resource location, uncovered several potential communication mechanisms, and demonstrated new information transfer mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are unique to stingless bees and some may provide insight into how the ability to encode location information, a form of functionally referential communication, has evolved in the highly social bees. The goal of this review is to examine meliponine recruitment communication, focusing on evidence for contact-based, visual, olfactory, and acoustic communication and what these mechanisms can tell us about the evolution of recruitment communication in stingless bees.