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The guide and recruit maintain close contact during a tandem run using their antennae.

Conclusions

Although some of the findings exposed in research on bee language are still hypothetical, much has been discovered on the forms and modalities of communication, as well as an insect’s individual ability to defer to knowledge gathered in their environment on profitable resources and an internal mapping system with which it compiles information on its paths. Within the field, many discoveries are still being made and old theories revised. For example, for decades it was believed that A. mellifera had two distinct dances to communicate distance and direction to recruited dance-observers (Von Frisch et al. 1967). Recently however, these two dances have been shown to be the same, varying only in the length of their waggle phases, which depend on how distant the advertised resource is—the closer, the shorter the waggle-phase (Gardner et al. 2007). Honeybee dancing, piping and pheromone cues can truly be described as an interrelated form of language capable of transmitting many different meanings. The tremble dance is one example in that it can be interpreted in two distinct ways by forager recruits and dancers (Seeley 1992). We have seen that because of the variable specificity and accuracy of honeybee waggle-dancing, recruits often receive incomplete information. Averaging observed dance information allows for a theoretical consensus in A. mellifera on the ideal potential nest site. In bees and ants, using various types of olfactory, visual, auditory, and sensory signaling allows for the development of complex systems of networking, multi-modal evaluations of resources, and labor distribution within these finely tuned super-organisms. These communication strategies are crucial to the complex division of labor and the efficiency of resource foraging in all species of eusocial insects.

Discussion questions

  • Why are the dances that bees use considered to be “languages”? Is this assessment a legitimate one?
  • Why is the flexibility of the dances and their interpretation important?

Glossary

  • Eusociality - Indicative of a high level of social stratification including reproductive division of labor, overlapping generations and cooperative care of the young
  • Landmark-based Information - Information gathered by insects in the environment that allow them to orient themselves with regards to a food source or the nest.
  • Multiple-patriline Colony - A colony with one queen who has mated with multiple males. In the case of honeybees, this is often indicative of a successful and active colony with respect to a single-patriline colony. All natural colonies are founded by queens that have mated many with many males, all in a short space of time.
  • Odor/Olfactory Communication - Communication by insects using either the pollen and odor of familiar or unfamiliar flowers to help describe a food sites location, or scent attractants and repellents in the form of pheromones produced in their own bodies.
  • Path Integration - The ability of an animal to return to an initial location using cues such as landmarks as well as memory-based notions of distance and direction.
  • Pheromone - A chemical substance secreted by one individual intended to elicit a specific response from another member of the same species. They can be attractants or repellents and are often interpretable in a variety of ways based on context.
  • Private Information - Information gathered by individual insects that allows them to disregard an unknown location that is communicated by one of their kin in favor of prior knowledge on food resources.
  • Shaking Dance - A dance executed by forager usually in a time of low nectar yield, but immediately following a resource discovery. It signals to recruits to go to the hive surface and observe waggle-dance runs. The dancer executes quick up and down movements of the abdomen sometimes with its front legs on the recruit. (Hölldobler&Wilson 2009).
  • Single-patriline Colony - A colony with one queen who has fertilized all of her brood with the sperm from only a single male. In the case of honeybees, it is often unfavorable in terms of overall colony efficiency and health, and is only found in experimental situations since in nature queens always mate multiply.
  • Tuned Error Hypothesis - Predicts that built in inaccuracies and the brevity of short-run waggle dances allows for equal distribution of scouting recruits at close ranges and at a more precisely indicated distant ranges (Tanner et al. 2008).
  • Tandem Run - A technique employed by ants in which a guide leads a recruit along a path towards a potential food site. During the run, the follower and guide often maintain contact with their antennae.
  • Tremble Dance - A honeybee forager executes this dance by vibrating quickly and turning about an axis as much as 50 degrees per second while slowly moving across the hive surface. It signals an end to forager recruiting and the initiation of nectar reception (Seeley 1992).
  • Waggle Dance - Two phases, the waggle phase and the return phase performed alternately and cyclically characterize this method of honeybee communication. Direction and duration of the waggle phase is directly linked to the direction and the distance to the site communicated (whether it be a food source or a potential nesting site).

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Source:  OpenStax, Mockingbird tales: readings in animal behavior. OpenStax CNX. Jan 12, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11211/1.5
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