The biogenic amine octopamine (OA) is a key modulator of individual and social behaviours in honeybees, but its role in the other group of highly eusocial bees, the stingless bees, remains largely unknown. In honeybees, OA mediates reward perception and affects a wide range of reward-seeking behaviours. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that OA increases individual foraging effort and collective food source exploitation in the neotropical stingless bee Plebeia droryana. OA treatment caused a significant increase in the number of bees at artificial sucrose feeders and a 1.73-times higher individual foraging frequency. This effect can be explained by OA lowering the sucrose response threshold and, thus, increasing the perceived value of the food source. Our results demonstrate that, similar to its effects on honeybees, OA increases both individual and collective food source exploitation in P. droryana. This suggests that, despite having evolved many complex behaviours independently, OA might have similar regulatory effects on foraging behaviours in the two groups of highly eusocial bees.

中文翻译：

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章鱼胺可增加新热带无刺蜂的个体和集体觅食。

生物胺章鱼胺（OA）是蜜蜂个体和社交行为的关键调节剂，但其在另一类高度共社交蜜蜂，无刺蜜蜂中的作用仍然未知。在蜜蜂中，OA介导奖励感知并影响广泛的奖励寻求行为。因此，我们检验了以下假设：OA在新热带无刺蜂Plebeia droryana中增加了个体觅食的努力和集体食物来源的开发。OA处理使人工蔗糖喂食器中的蜜蜂数量显着增加，个体觅食频率提高了1.73倍。OA降低了蔗糖反应阈值，从而增加了食物来源的感知价值，可以解释这种效果。我们的结果表明，类似于它对蜜蜂的影响，OA增加了P. droryana的个体和集体食物来源开发。这表明，尽管OA独立地发展了许多复杂的行为，但它们可能在两组高度亲社会的蜜蜂中对觅食行为具有类似的调节作用。