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

George, Ebi Antony; Thulasi, Neethu; Kohl, Patrick L.; Suresh, Sachin; Rutschmann, Benjamin; Brockmann, Axel

doi:10.1101/2020.12.17.423277

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Since honey bees use optic flow to estimate the distance flown to a goal, variation in the visual appearance of the terrain can affect their distance estimations (Tautz et al, 2004). Although the visual odometer is thought to be quite robust with respect to the contrast variation the bees typically encounter when foraging (Si, Srinivasan & Zhang, 2003;George et al, 2020), we wanted to make sure that the effect of foraging distance on dance behavior was not confounded by variation in the terrain. The forest location allowed us to train the bees in a homogenous terrain along a straight gravel road through beech forest.…”

Section: Feeder Training Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Review #2 of "Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions (v0.1)"

2021

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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 distancerelated 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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Section: Feeder Training Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Review #2 of "Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions (v0.1)"

2021

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Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions

Kohl¹,

Rutschmann²

2021

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

Cited by 2 publications

References 46 publications

Peer Review #2 of "Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions (v0.1)"

Peer Review #2 of "Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions (v0.1)"

Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions

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