Response to competing conspecific cues depends on social context in the honey bee Apis mellifera

Animals exist in a world that is replete with sensory information. Not all of this sensory information is relevant to the organism at a given time, though. Understanding how animals are able to pick out ‘the signal from the noise’ has been of interest to behaviour and neuroscience researchers for decades. This problem may be especially challenging when the conflicting sensory ‘noise’ is also a conspecific signal, given that organisms often show heightened sensitivity to conspecific cues. We challenged nurse honey bees who were performing larval caretaking behaviours with honey bee alarm pheromone, a conspecific cue that they are able to detect but show low behavioural sensitivity to compared with other honey bee workers like guards and soldiers. We found that nurse bees that originated from high-aggression colonies decreased their larval caretaking behaviours in the presence of alarm pheromone, while nurses from low-aggression colonies did not show this change. Our work highlights the importance of considering social context when examining how organisms respond in the face of a sensory-rich world.