Meeting Abstract
Social insects such as ants, bees, and wasps are ecologically and evolutionarily dominant animals that provide critical ecosystem services such as pollination. While both theoretical and empirical studies suggest that the degree of sociality (i.e., colony size or degree of division of labor) plays a critical role in resilience to stressors such as pesticides, the specific behavioral mechanisms underlying these impacts remain unclear. Here, we use a combination of empirical and modeling approaches to explore how colony size affects sensitivity to environmental stressors (particularly pesticides and temperature fluctuations). By developing an agent-based model parameterized on detailed behavioral data, we show that colony size mitigates the impacts of exposure to imidacloprid in Bombus impatiens colonies. Next, we describe recent experiments combining automated individual tracking with high-resolution thermal imaging to study how the synergistic effects of temperature fluctuations and pesticide exposure change during colony development in bumblebees (Bombus impatiens, Bombus bimaculatus, and Bombus griseocolis). Finally, we highlight the potential of combining modeling and high-throughput, empirical tracking techniques for exploring central questions in collective resilience of bumblebees and other social insects.
