A Minimally Invasive Approach Towards "Ecosystem Hacking" With Honeybees

Download

index.pdf

Date

2022-04-01

Author

Stefanec, Martin
Hofstadler, Daniel N.
Krajnik, Tomas
Turgut, Ali Emre
Alemdar, Hande
Lennox, Barry
Şahin, Erol
Arvin, Farshad
Schmickl, Thomas

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

126
views

98
downloads

Honey bees live in colonies of thousands of individuals, that not only need to collaborate with each other but also to interact intensively with their ecosystem. A small group of robots operating in a honey bee colony and interacting with the queen bee, a central colony element, has the potential to change the collective behavior of the entire colony and thus also improve its interaction with the surrounding ecosystem. Such a system can be used to study and understand many elements of bee behavior within hives that have not been adequately researched. We discuss here the applicability of this technology for ecosystem protection: A novel paradigm of a minimally invasive form of conservation through "Ecosystem Hacking". We discuss the necessary requirements for such technology and show experimental data on the dynamics of the natural queen's court, initial designs of biomimetic robotic surrogates of court bees, and a multi-agent model of the queen bee court system. Our model is intended to serve as an AI-enhanceable coordination software for future robotic court bee surrogates and as a hardware controller for generating nature-like behavior patterns for such a robotic ensemble. It is the first step towards a team of robots working in a bio-compatible way to study honey bees and to increase their pollination performance, thus achieving a stabilizing effect at the ecosystem level.

Subject Keywords

honeybees, micro-robotics, ecosystem hacking, swarm robotics, queen behavior, DIVISION-OF-LABOR, APIS-MELLIFERA, CLIMATE-CHANGE, BEE COLONY, QUEEN, ANTS, DECOMPOSITION, AGRICULTURE, INTEGRATION, PHEROMONES

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/99617

Journal

FRONTIERS IN ROBOTICS AND AI

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.791921

Collections

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Combined effects of the 4-nonylphenol and fish kairomones on the survival, morphology and life history traits of Daphnia magna Straus Özcan, Hatice Elif; Beklioğlu, Meryem; Togan, İnci; Department of Biology () Daphnia has evolved morphological and life history defenses against predators and these appear to be mediated by chemicals (kairomones) released by the predator. Furthermore, anthropogenic stressors including alkylphenols have been shown to affect several characteristics of Daphnia. Daphnia magna that were grown in the fish-conditioned water and nonfish- conditioned water were exposed to 0.005, 0.01, 0.05, 0.15, 0.5 mg l'1 NP concentrations in the acute toxicity and 0.001, 0.005, 0.01 mg l"1 NP concentratio...
Honey Bee Diversity Is Swayed by Migratory Beekeeping and Trade Despite Conservation Practices: Genetic Evidence for the Impact of Anthropogenic Factors on Population Structure Kükrer, Mert; Kence, Aykut (2021-04-15) The intense admixture of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) populations at a global scale is mostly attributed to the widespread migratory beekeeping practices and replacement of queens and colonies with non-native races or hybrids of different subspecies. These practices are also common in Anatolia and Thrace, but their influence on the genetic make-up of the five native subspecies of honey bees has not been explored. Here, we present an analysis of 30 microsatellite markers from honey bees from six different r...
A review of methods for discrimination of honey bee populations as applied to European beekeeping Bouga, Maria; et. al. (2011-01-01) Here, scientists from 19 European countries, most of them collaborating in Working Group 4: "Diversity and Vitality" of COST Action FA 0803 "Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes" (COLOSS), review the methodology applied in each country for discriminating between honey bee populations. Morphometric analyses (classical and geometric) and different molecular markers have been applied. Even if the approach has been similar, however, different methodologies regarding measurements, landmarks or molecular markers...
Genetic diversity of honey bee populations in Turkey based on microsatellite markers : a comparison between migratory versus stationary apiaries and isolated regions versus regions open to migratory beekeeping Kükrer, Mert; Kence, Aykut; Department of Biology (2013) The honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) is a globally significant species of apparent economic and ecological importance. Recent reports from Spain, Italy and Greece point to an intense admixture of honey bee populations signified by a loss of population structure. This is mostly attributed to migratory beekeeping practices and replacement of queens or colonies with commercial ones that are usually from non-native races or hybrids of different subspecies. These two practices are also heavily carried out in parts ...
Metatranscriptomic analyses of honey bee colonies Tozkar, Cansu O.; Kence, Meral; Kence, Aykut; Huang, Qiang; Evans, Jay D. (2015-03-19) Honey bees face numerous biotic threats from viruses to bacteria, fungi, protists, and mites. Here we describe a thorough analysis of microbes harbored by worker honey bees collected from field colonies in geographically distinct regions of Turkey. Turkey is one of the World's most important centers of apiculture, harboring five subspecies of Apis rnellifera L., approximately 20% of the honey bee subspecies in the world. We use deep ILLUMINA-based RNA sequencing to capture RNA species for the honey bee and ...

Citation Formats

M. Stefanec et al., “A Minimally Invasive Approach Towards “Ecosystem Hacking” With Honeybees,” FRONTIERS IN ROBOTICS AND AI, vol. 9, pp. 0–0, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/99617.