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Speaker:
Valerie Kuklovsky, University of Konstanz

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Abstract: Western honey bee colonies (Apis mellifera), which provide critical pollination services to global agriculture, are dramatically decreasing within recent years. Among the major factors underlying this drastic decline diseases play a prominent role. Individual bees lack an adaptive immune system but the colonies have evolved behavioural collective defense strategies to prevent pathogen infection and transmission. These strategies are referred to as ‘social immunity’ and include hygienic behaviour i.e., uncapping and removal of infected brood¹and the removal of diseased adults² performed by specialized individuals within a colony. Hygienic behavior has been proven as strong defense against multiple pathogens. Despite the importance for global honey bee health, a mechanistic understanding of hygienic behavior is still lacking. Recent evidence suggests that hygienic behavior is mainly driven via olfactory cues emitted by the pathogen and/or the host, although only a few odorants were identified and confirmed behaviorally. Furthermore, the causal molecular mechanisms underlying olfactory driven hygienic behavior remains to be elucidated. In the newly founded HFSP funded SoBee project we form a consortium to join expertise in entomology, synthetic biology and chemistry to identify causal factors underlying social immunity.

Bio: I did my PhD in Würzburg elucidating consistent individual differences in the cognitive proficiency of bees providing first evidence for the existence of ‘general intelligence’ in an insect. I have now almost ten years of experience in performing behavioral experiments, especially learning experiments with bees. I started working with bees during my bachelor’s degree in Mainz and continued ever since. I conducted the research for my bachelor thesis at the University of Melbourne in Australia and for my master thesis at the University of Paul Sabatier in  Toulouse, France at the Research Center on Animal Cognition. Seven months ago I joined the Neurobiology Department of the University Konstanz as Post-doc in the Sobee project.