Superorganisms function like human brains, and individual bees like neurons, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Sheffield who suggest that looking at honeybees in a colony as similar to neurons in a brain could help us better understand the basic mechanisms of human behavior.
The team studied a theoretical model of how honeybees decide where to build their nest and viewed the bee colony as a single superorganism that displays a coordinated response to external stimuli—similar to the human brain. The study published earlier this month in Scientific Reports concluded that the way in which bees "speak" with each other and make decisions is comparable to the way the many individual neurons in the human brain interact with each other.
Previous research has shown that the brain of humans and other animals follow certain rules known as psychophysical laws. Single brain neurons do not obey the laws, but the whole brain does. Similarly, this study found that even if single bees do not obey these laws, the superorganism, i.e. the bee colony, does.
"This study is exciting because it suggests that honeybee colonies adhere to the same laws as the brain when making collective decisions,” explained Andreagiovanni Reina, first author of the paper and research associate in collective robotics.
"With this view in mind, parallels between bees in a colony and neurons in a brain can be traced, helping us to understand and identify the general mechanisms underlying psychophysics laws, which may ultimately lead to a better understanding of the human brain. Finding similarities between the behavior of honeybee colonies and brain neurons is useful because the behavior of bees selecting a nest is simpler than studying neurons in a brain that makes decisions."