DOI: 10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mcj
title: The effect of Israeli acute paralysis infection on honey bee brood care behavior

description: To protect themselves from communicable diseases, social insects utilize
 social immunity—behavioral, phsyiological, and organizational means to
 combat disease transmission and severity. Within a honey bee colony,
 larvae are visited thousands of times by nurse bees, representing a prime
 environment for pathogen transmission. We investigated a potential social
 immune response to Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) infection in brood
 care, testing the hypotheses that bees will respond with behaviors that
 result in reduced brood care, or that infection results in elevated brood
 care as a virus-driven mechanism to increase transmission. We tested for
 group-level effects by comparing three different social environments in
 which 0%, 50%, or 100% of bees were experimentally infected with IAPV. We
 investigated individual-level effects by comparing exposed bees to
 unexposed bees within the mixed-exposure treatment group. We found no
 evidence for a social immune response at the group level; however,
 individually, exposed bees interacted with the larva more frequently than
 their unexposed nestmates. While this could increase virus transmission
 from adults to larvae, it could also represent a hygienic response to
 increase grooming when an infection is detected. Together, our findings
 underline the complexity of disease dynamics in complex social animal
 systems.
description: Honey bees were either experimentally infected with Israeli acute
 paralysis virus (IAPV) or treated with a control solution. Each bee was
 paint-marked for individual tracking of behaviors. The bees were grouped
 in sets of 10 to create three different types of social environment—0% of
 bees exposed to IAPV, 100% of bees exposed, and a mixed-treatment group
 with 50% of bees exposed to IAPV. The bees were introduced to a larval
 queen, at which point they were observed for five minutes. The number of
 events and duration of behaviors such as "external-antennation"
 around the opening of the queen cell and entering inside the queen cell
 ("insertion") were recorded for each individual bee, as were the
 number of unique visitors ("responders") to the queen cell, and
 summed for the entire social group. The group-level responses were
 standardized by dividing by the number of living bees in the behavioral
 assay arena. Virus titers in the bees were measured with qPCR, and the dry
 head masses of nurse bees were also recorded.
description: Data set requires RStudio and Microsoft Excel or a similar .csv
 reader.
description: # IAPV effect on honey bee brood care behavior --- Honey bees were either
 experimentally infected with Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) or
 treated with a control solution. Each bee was paint-marked for individual
 tracking of behaviors. The bees were grouped in sets of 10 to create three
 different types of social environment0% of bees exposed to IAPV, 100% of
 bees exposed, and a mixed-treatment group with 50% of bees exposed to
 IAPV. The bees were introduced to a larval queen, at which point they were
 observed for five minutes. The number of events and duration of behaviors
 such as "external-antennation" around the opening of the queen
 cell and entering inside the queen cell ("insertion") were
 recorded for each individual bee, as were the number of unique visitors
 ("responders") to the queen cell, and summed for the entire
 social group. The group-level responses were standardized by dividing by
 the number of living bees in the behavioral assay arena. Virus titers in
 the bees were measured with qPCR, and the dry head masses of nurse bees
 were also recorded. We found no evidence for a social immune response at
 the group level; however, individually, exposed bees interacted with the
 larva more frequently than their unexposed nestmates. While this could
 increase virus transmission from adults to larvae, it could also represent
 a hygienic response to increase grooming when an infection is detected.
 DishLevelData.csv refers to the group-level responses of the three
 different social environments (PercentExposed). There are columns for the
 duration of external-antennation (DurationA or simply DA), the number of
 external-antennation events (InteractionA or IA), the duration of
 insertion behaviors (DurationI or DI), the number of insertion behaviors
 (InteractionI or II), and the number of unique visitors to the queen cell
 (Responder# or R). These values were standardized by dividing by the
 number of living bees in the group at the time of recording
 (PopCorrectedDA, PopCorrectedDI, etc.). IndividualBeeLevelData.csv has
 data points for each bee used in the behavioral assays. Each row
 represents an individual bee, including the group the bee was observed
 with (Dish), the unique color marking (color), whether the bee was exposed
 to the virus or not (Treatment), and the social environment the bee was
 grouped in (PercentExposed). Similar to the dish level data, there are
 columns for the duration and number of antennation and insertion
 behaviors. If a bee did not respond at all (i.e. scored 0 on any of the
 behavioral metrics), it was notated as a NonResponder. If a bee scored
 higher than 0, it was designated as a Responder. NurseIAPVTiters.csv
 refers to the qPCR data for a subset of bees used in the behavioral
 assays, with references to the bees individual treatment as well as the
 social group it was a part of (Dish). Dataset includes the CT Mean and SD,
 the quantity mean and SD, and the log-transformed quantity mean values.
 Similarly, DryHeadMass.csv refers to the dry head mass (mg) data for a
 subset of bees. Script requires the R packages ggplot2, dplyr, lm4,
 Matrix, lattice, latticeExtra, performance, emmeans, and pwr. R script
 requires to the four named .csv files included with the dataset:
 DishLevelData.csv, IndividualBeeLevelData.csv, NurseIAPVTiters.csv, and
 DryHeadMass.csv.