PhD offer: Decoding the collective defence repertoire against diseases in the honey bee

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

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

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 €).

Training and skills

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.

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

The application should include a detailed CV, a motivation letter, academic records (student grade from Master or equivalent), 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 20^th, 2024 (before noon). Selected candidates will be interviewed early January.