Adaptive evolution of honeybee dance dialects

Kohl, Patrick L.; Thulasi, Neethu; Rutschmann, Benjamin; George, Ebi Antony; Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf; Brockmann, Axel

doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.0190

Cited by 32 publications

(56 citation statements)

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“…The specific sampling locations were chosen to reduce the effects of other potential variables such as pesticide use, immediate floral abundance within 100 m of the collection site, traffic, shade, presence of human-made structures, and presence of Giant Asian honey bee colonies (SI Appendix, Table S1). As a proxy for general floral abundance encompassing the maximum foraging range of A. dorsata at each site (up to 3.5-km radius) (32,35), we also analyzed variation in the Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) concurrent with experimental dates (36-38 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A field-based quantitative analysis of sublethal effects of air pollution on pollinators

Thimmegowda

Mullen

Sottilare

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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While the impact of air pollution on human health is well studied, mechanistic impacts of air pollution on wild systems, including those providing essential ecosystem services, are largely unknown, but directly impact our health and well-being. India is the world’s largest fruit producer, second most populous country, and contains 9 of the world’s 10 most polluted cities. Here, we sampled Giant Asian honey bees, Apis dorsata, at locations with varying air pollution levels in Bangalore, India. We observed significant correlations between increased respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) deposition and changes in bee survival, flower visitation, heart rate, hemocyte levels, and expression of genes related to lipid metabolism, stress, and immunity. Lab-reared Drosophila melanogaster exposed to these same sites also exhibited similar molecular and physiological differences. Our study offers a quantitative analysis on the current impacts of air pollution on insects, and indicates the urgency for more nonhuman studies to accurately assess the effects of pollution on our natural world.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A field-based quantitative analysis of sublethal effects of air pollution on pollinators

Thimmegowda

Mullen

Sottilare

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Apart from that, it is not even clear what is the precise shape of the distance-duration relationship. The current view is that waggle duration increases with foraging distance in a simple linear fashion ( Schürch et al, 2013 , 2016 , 2019 ; Kohl et al, 2020 ). Interestingly, Karl von Frisch, the discoverer of the spatial information content of the waggle dance, and his colleagues had originally proposed a different shape of the function ( von Frisch & Jander, 1957 ; von Frisch & Kratky, 1962 ; von Frisch, 1965 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Foragers visually gauge the length of the flight path to the goal based on the amount of image motion perceived during flight (optic flow) and encode it in the duration of the waggle phase, with longer waggle phases indicating further distances ( Esch & Burns, 1996 ; Srinivasan, 2000 ; Esch et al, 2001 ; De Marco & Menzel, 2005 ). However, there is no universal distance-code and different (sub)species of honey bee can vary substantially in the slopes of their distance-duration functions ( Lindauer, 1956 ; Bosch, 1957 ; Kohl et al, 2020 ). Apart from that, it is not even clear what is the precise shape of the distance-duration relationship.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions

Kohl¹,

Rutschmann²

2021

PeerJ

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Honey bees (genus Apis) can communicate the approximate location of a resource to their nestmates via the waggle dance. The distance to a goal is encoded by the duration of the waggle phase of the dance, but the precise shape of this distance-duration relationship is ambiguous: earlier studies (before the 1990s) proposed that it is non-linear, with the increase in waggle duration flattening with distance, while more recent studies suggested that it follows a simple linear function (i.e. a straight line). Strikingly, authors of earlier studies trained bees to much longer distances than authors of more recent studies, but unfortunately they usually measured the duration of dance circuits (waggle phase plus return phase of the dance), which is only a correlate of the bees’ distance signal. We trained honey bees (A. mellifera carnica) to visit sugar feeders over a relatively long array of distances between 0.1 and 1.7 km from the hive and measured the duration of both the waggle phase and the return phase of their dances from video recordings. The distance-related increase in waggle duration was better described by a non-linear model with a decreasing slope than by a simple linear model. The relationship was equally well captured by a model with two linear segments separated at a “break-point” at 1 km distance. In turn, the relationship between return phase duration and distance was sufficiently well described by a simple linear model. The data suggest that honey bees process flight distance differently before and beyond a certain threshold distance. While the physiological and evolutionary causes of this behavior remain to be explored, our results can be applied to improve the estimation of honey bee foraging distances based on the decoding of waggle dances.

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“…The experiments in the botanical garden are described elsewhere (Kohl et al, 2020), although the dances for this manuscript were analysed separately. preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder.…”

Section: Colony Preparation and Experimental Locationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The copyright holder for this this version posted December 18, 2020. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.17.423277 doi: bioRxiv preprint strong similarities in the relationship between the waggle phase duration and foraging range, the change in dance precision with distance and the dance follower behaviour (Beekman et al, 2015;George et al, 2020;Kohl et al, 2020;Sen Sarma et al, 2004). A. florea and tropical A. cerana have similarly "steep" calibration curves which increase with distance more rapidly than the temperate A. mellifera (Kohl et al, 2020). Given that A. florea and A. cerana apparently have a more similarly tuned waggle dance odometer while being phylogenetically most distant, they are well suited to explore possible differences or the dance odometer among honey bee species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do honey bee species differ in the odometer used for the waggle dance?

George

Thulasi

Kohl

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Honey bees estimate distances to food sources using image motion experienced on the flight path and they use this measure to tune the waggle phase duration in their dance communication. Most studies on the relationship between experienced optic flow and the dance-related odometer are based on experiments with Apis mellifera foragers trained into a small tunnel with black and white patterns which allowed quantifiable changes in the optic flow. In this study we determined the calibration curves for foragers of the two Asian honey bee species, A. florea and A. cerana, in two different natural environments with clear differences in the vegetation conditions and hence visual contrast. We found that the dense vegetation condition (with higher contrast) elicited a more rapid increase in the waggle phase duration with distance than the sparse vegetation in A. florea but not in A. cerana. Visual contrast did not affect the perception of the food reward, measured as the number of dance circuits produced per distance, in both species. Our findings suggest that contrast sensitivity of the waggle dance odometer, or other aspects of flight behaviour, might vary among honey bee species.

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Adaptive evolution of honeybee dance dialects

Cited by 32 publications

References 50 publications

A field-based quantitative analysis of sublethal effects of air pollution on pollinators

A field-based quantitative analysis of sublethal effects of air pollution on pollinators

Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions

Do honey bee species differ in the odometer used for the waggle dance?

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