| Circadian rhythms enable organisms to anticipate and to prepare for predictable changes in their environment. Most previous studies on circadian rhythms focused on solitary animals. However, in social insects, the colony as a superorganism has a foraging rhythm aligned to the patterns of resource availability. Within this colony rhythm, the activity patterns of individuals are embedded. In temperate regions bumblebee foragers show strong circadian rhythms that adjust their foraging activity to the changing light conditions in the course of the day. But what about circadian foraging patterns under continuous daylight? One would assume that the colony as a whole extends its foraging activity over the whole 24 hours of a day under such light conditions to... |
