ENT104 - Honey Bee Communication: Waggle Dance (L12)

What are communication cues?

Information passively left in an environment by an animal

Tracks, odors, sounds, etc.

Used by any receiver

What are communication signals?

Information intentionally sent by one animal to another

Usually used within the same species

What is eavesdropping?

When animals use the communication signals of another species

How does selection cause cues to evolve into signals?

Signals are often cues that have been shaped by natural selection to contain more information (or more precise information)

Selection often leads to the receivers developing increased sensitivity to the signals

What do threat signals evolve from?

Movement preceding an attack

What are the two steps to the most common method for determining the meaning of a signal?

1. Determining the context in which the signal is sent (e.g. presence of a predator)

2. Recording the response of the receiver (e.g. prey run from predator)

How did cues evolve into signals in bumble bee dances?

Ancestral inactive workers used the activity in the nest (a cue) to tell how much foraging is occurring

If a worker exaggerates/increases their activity in the nest after finding food for the first time, this is now a signal (evolved from the original activity/cue)

What are complex signals?

Signals that can have many different meanings

(True or False)

Complex signals are very uncommon in social insects

False

Different social insect castes can have different meanings for the same signals

What are examples of chemical communication signals in honeybees?

Fertility

Alarm

Flower visitation

Colony membership

Mate attraction

I use "MCAFF" (pronounced McAff) to remember this

What are examples of acoustic/mechanical communication signals in honeybees?

Dances

Shaking

Buzzing

Vibrating

I don't have a helpful abbreviation for this, but I just think of them as dance moves

What is an example (from the study guide) of a complex signal in social insects?

Queen pheromones have different meanings to different castes

To messenger bees, they mean "come with me"

To older workers, they mean "get out of my way"

What are the two purposes of signals sent by foragers?

1. Inform other foragers about the availability and location of food

2. Coordinate the activities of middle-aged bees (who process nectar and make combs) with the foragers

What waves of light can bees see that we cannot?

UV

What waves of light can we see that bees cannot?

Red

What is the waggle dance of honeybees used for?

Bees find food, return to the hive, and then perform a waggle dance to communicate about the direction and value of the food source

What did Karl von Frisch do?

He studied color vision, polarized light vision, and waggle dances in bees

Published major work on the waggle dance in the 1940s

How did Karl von Frisch study the waggle dance of honeybees?

Marking bees at feeders, then checking if those bees dance when they return to the hive

How did Karl von Frisch study color vision in honeybees?

Trained bees to associate food rewards with certain colors

Observed if bees return to that color even if it is moved around

Learned that bees can see and remember patterns

What do flowers have that bees can see?

Nectar guides, UV patterns on their petals that guide bees towards their nectar

What does the run of a waggle dance indicate?

The distance to the food source

The run is the length (in time or distance) of the waggle dance when the bee is moving in a straight line and waggling her abdomen

Longer runs = longer time/distance of food source from hive

What does the angle of the waggle dance indicate?

The angle of the dance relative to a vertical line is the angle to the food source relative to the sun

What does the number of waggle dances performed indicate?

More dances = more valuable food source

Fewer dances = worse food source

What does the number of waggle runs in a single waggle dance indicate?

The number of bees recruited to the food source

More runs = more bees = better source

How do bees determine the quality of a food source?

By determining how much energy they gain by going there

A far-off source is less valuable than a nearby source (more energy expended by going to a far-off source)

A low sweetness source is less valuable than a high sweetness source (less energy gained from a low sweetness source)

A nearby source with low sugar sweetness can be equal to a far-off source with high sugar sweetness

How is the waggle dance sent to other honeybees?

Via many sensory modalities

Pheromones

Sounds

Substrate Vibrations

What is the only sense not used in following the waggle dance? Why?

Sight, because the dance is done in the dark of the nest

What are waggle dance pheromones composed of?

A blend of hydrocarbons (alkenes and alkanes)

What do waggle dance foragers produce more of in their pheromones than other foragers?

Alkanes and alkenes

(True or False)

More vigorous waggle dancers produce pheromones with greater amounts of alkenes and alkanes than less vigorous waggle dancers

True

What do honeybees use dances (other than the waggle dance) for?

Controlling foraging and processing collected nectar

How do bees know how far they've flown from a food source straight back to the hive?

Optic flow

what is optic flow?

The rate of image flow across the retina, giving a sense of how fast you are going

How did researchers figure out that bees use optic flow to measure how far they've flown to the hive from a food source?

Made foragers fly down a narrow tube with increased optic flow to a feeder. The time and energy used to fly through the tubes stays the same, but the optic flow changes

The forager is tricked into thinking that it flew a longer distance due to the increased optic flow

The forager returns to the hive and does its waggle dance

Recruits fly to a feeder that is much farther away than the feeder connected to the optic flow tube,

Indicated that the forager based the run of its waggle dance on the optic flow it perceived rather than the time or energy spent flying