Chemical Communication in Honeybees

摘要

In animal societies, communication provides the ties that bind, and chemical communication is especially important for social insects and mammals. Because chemical communication is best understood in insects, it is no surprise that this subject also is advanced for social insects relative to other animals that live in complex societies. Dozens of pherotnones have been identified that mediate nearly all aspects of colonial life, including orientation, social foraging, social defense, brood care, kin recognition, mating, and the rigid reproductive hierarchy that is the hallmark of an advanced insect society. But no single social insect pheromone has been studied more intensively than the one produced by the mandibular glands of the queen honeybee, Apis mellifera. Plettner et al. in this issue of Science (1) describe the biosynthesis of honeybee queen mandibular pheromone, a significant development because of the pivotal role this substance plays in the regulation of social life.