Background and duties
Despite their high susceptibility to invasions and disease spread due to the tight cooperation of individuals living in close contact, many social animals have evolved mechanisms that allow effective defence at the group level. Considering the colony as a superorganism where individuals equate to cells, these defences provide the colony with the equivalent of an immune system. They have in common to be based on collective action or altruistic behaviour of parasitized individuals, resulting in avoidance and/or increased levels of tolerance or resistance. Colony members have to decide whether or not to start a response, when and where to start it, and who should be responsible for the defence. Such defences have been described across the animal kingdom, especially within social insect species such as the honey bee, Apis mellifera. However, the mechanisms that support these social immune systems remain largely unravelled, and more particularly how the individuals cooperate to make the decision to perform collective defences for the benefit of the colony.
The Bee Healthy project aims to decipher the mechanisms that underpin collective behavioural defences in honey bee colonies, from gene expression to behaviour regulation at the colony level. Within this project, the PhD candidate will conduct research to describe the behavioural arrays of defence of bees that are engaged in such social immune responses, via the development of new methods to analyse these behavioural repertoires at the individual bee level. Only a few individuals per colony are known to contribute to the collective defence traits. To unravel the characteristics of such bees, it is important to identify the undertakers amongst thousands of individuals, implying the use of complex behavioural observation designs. As analyses of video recorded behavioural sequences is very time consuming when done by observers, we will rely on and develop automated algorithms to perform the analyses.
In particular, the research will involve activities in the laboratory as well as in the field to perform behavioural observations of adult honey bees facing diseased brood. Experiments will be conducted via direct observations and video-tracking, followed by the development of algorithms to obtain automatic analyses of the behavioural sequences of interest.
References
Cremer, S. Social immunity in insects. Curr. Biol. 29, R458–R463 (2019).
Lauer, J, et al. Multi-animal pose estimation, identification and tracking with DeepLabCut. Nature Methods 19.4 (2022): 496-504.
Mondet, F. et al.* Antennae hold a key to Varroa-sensitive hygiene behaviour in honey bees. Sci. Rep. 5, 10454 (2015).
Mondet, F. et al.* Chemical detection triggers honey bee defense against a destructive parasitic threat. Nat. Chem. Biol. 17, 524–530 (2021).
Petitjean, Q. et al.* MoveR: an R package for easy processing and analysis of animal video-tracking data. SoftwareX 26 (2024): 101674.
*from supervising labs
Candidate profile
We are looking for a highly motivated PhD student with a strong background in behavioural ecology, and a sound interest for honey bee biology.
Applicants should have a Master (or equivalent) in biology/ecology or related discipline and skills in the following areas:
Behavioural lab or field experiments, preferably with insects
Statistical analyses (use of R)
Proficiency in R coding, familiarity with scripting/programming
Bibliographic surveys and syntheses
Scientific writing and communication (in English)
The candidate is expected to work in an interdisciplinary environment, thus good communication skills and excellent team-working capacities are expected. Experience with social insects, practical skills in beekeeping and fluency in French would be an asset. A driver license, good general health and no known allergies to bee stings are required to work on our experimental apiaries.
Research environment and work conditions
You will join the “Bees and Environment” research unit of INRAE in Avignon (84, France), which develops a wide range of research programs to study honey bee and wild bee populations, in the context of sustainable farming and global change. This project is developed in partnership with the research unit of INRAE in Sophia Antipolis, hence part of the PhD work will take place in Sophia Antipolis (06, France). This PhD project is part of an ERC Starting grant (2024-2028 – Bee Healthy). You will work in close collaboration with our teams both in Avignon and Sophia Antipolis (postdoc and research assistant in chemical ecology, our beekeeping technicians, PhD students and engineers in video-phenotyping…). You will benefit from all the lab and field work facilities of the units, including our experimental apiary and behaviour analysis facilities.
The contract will be for 3 years, starting in March 2025.
Salary and benefits are according to INRAE rules in France (monthly gross salary ~ 2,100 €).
How to apply
The application should include a detailed CV, a motivation letter and contact details of two scientific references, combined in a single pdf file.
For more information and to apply, contact Fanny Mondet (fanny.mondet@inrae.fr) and Vincent Calcagno (Vincent.calcagno@inrae.fr).
Application deadline: December 20th, 2024. Selected candidates will be interviewed early January.
