Honeybees do not reject dances for ‘implausible’ locations: reconsidering the evidence for cognitive maps in insects

Wray, Margaret K.; Klein, Barrett Anthony; Mattila, Heather R.; Seeley, Thomas D.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.04.005

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Instead, insects tended to briefly visit the perimeter and venture to the center in all the symmetrical arenas. Therefore, our results may be considered supporting evidence for the presence of an internalized representation of space in insects (Giurfa & Capaldi, 1999;Gould, 1986;Menzel et al, 2005;Webb, 2019;Wray, Klein, Mattila, & Seeley, 2008), especially taking into account that neural circuits for the processing of direction were recently discovered (Fisher, Lu, Alessandro, & Wilson, 2019;Kim, Hermundstad, Romani, Abbott, & Jayaraman, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Geometry-based navigation in the dark: Layout symmetry facilitates spatial learning in the house cricket,Acheta domesticus, in the absence of visual cues

Baran

Krzyżowski

Rádai

et al. 2019

Preprint

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There is heavy debate about the mechanisms of spatial navigation by insects. Researchers tend to focus mainly on vision-based models, neglecting non-visual modalities. The capacity to navigate by layout symmetry has been reported in vertebrates. Nevertheless, there has been no direct evidence for such an ability in insects, especially regarding center finding. To provide novel insight into the ongoing debate, we developed a non-visual paradigm for testing navigation by layout geometry. We tested the house crickets to find a cool spot positioned centrally in heated arenas of different shapes. We found that the symmetry of the arena significantly facilitates how crickets learn to find the center of the arena, both in terms of time spent on the cool spot and the latency of locating it. Because there were no visual cues, this observation challenges visiocentric models. As alternatives, we discuss the possibility of nonvisual space representation, or non-spatial search strategy.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Geometry-based navigation in the dark: Layout symmetry facilitates spatial learning in the house cricket,Acheta domesticus, in the absence of visual cues

Baran

Krzyżowski

Rádai

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…Recruit bees were reported to make no attempt to follow the vector indicated by dancing foragers to the 'impossible' food location in the middle of the lake (Gould, 1990). However, a more recent replication reports that recruit bees will indeed follow the dance and leave the nest in search of food (Wray et al, 2008). Consistent with this, Menzel et al (2011) (see also Riley et al, 2005) noted that recruit bees displaced when leaving the nest have not, as yet, been observed to move directly towards the correct feeder location (as might be thought possible if the vector from the dance is treated as indicating a location in their map), but rather will fly along the vector direction and distance indicated by the dance, regardless of the familiar visual terrain.…”

Section: Insects Might Use View Memory To Correct Path Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The internal maps of insects

Webb

2019

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Insect navigation is strikingly geometric. Many species use path integration to maintain an accurate estimate of their distance and direction (a vector) to their nest and can store the vector information for multiple salient locations in the world, such as food sources, in a common coordinate system. Insects can also use remembered views of the terrain around salient locations or along travelled routes to guide return, which is a fundamentally geometric process. Recent modelling of these abilities shows convergence on a small set of algorithms and assumptions that appear sufficient to account for a wide range of behavioural data. Notably, this 'base model' does not include any significant topological knowledge: the insect does not need to recover the information (implicit in their vector memory) about the relationships between salient places; nor to maintain any connectedness or ordering information between view memories; nor to form any associations between views and vectors. However, there remains some experimental evidence not fully explained by this base model that may point towards the existence of a more complex or integrated mental map in insects.

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“…Observing the behaviour of dance followers Videotapes of the observation hive's dance floor and entrance were analyzed, blind to patriline treatment, using a digital-video editor (Sony DSR-30), which allowed us to resolve the timing of the movement of focal dancers and dance followers to 1/30 s. For our study, a dance follower was defined according to Wray et al (2008) as a worker who was within one bee length of a dancer with her head oriented towards the dance. As an additional requirement, our dance followers had to be clearly following a focal dancer's circuits as she moved.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recruitment-dance signals draw larger audiences when honey bee colonies have multiple patrilines

2010

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Honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) who mate with multiple males produce colonies that are filled with numerous genetically distinct patrilines of workers. A genetically diverse colony benefits from an enhanced foraging effort, fuelled in part by an increase in the number of recruitment signals that are produced by foragers. However, the influence of patriline diversity on the attention paid to these signals by audiences of potentially receptive workers remains unexplored. To determine whether recruitment dances performed by foragers in multiple-patriline colonies attract a greater number of dance followers than dances in colonies that lack patriline diversity, we trained workers from multiple-and singlepatriline colonies to forage in a greenhouse and monitored their dance-following activity back in the hives. On average, more workers followed a dance if it was performed in a multiple-patriline colony rather than a single-patriline colony (33% increase), and for a greater number of dance circuits per follower. Furthermore, dance-following workers in multiple-patriline colonies were more likely to exit their hive after following a dance, although this did not translate to a difference in colony-level exit rates between treatment types. Recruiting nest mates to profitable food sources through dance communication is critical to a colony's foraging success and long-term fitness; polyandrous queens produce colonies that benefit not only from increased recruitment signalling, but also from the generation of larger and more attentive audiences of signal receivers. This study highlights the importance of integrating responses of both signal senders and receivers to understand more fully the success of animal-communication systems.

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Honeybees do not reject dances for ‘implausible’ locations: reconsidering the evidence for cognitive maps in insects

Cited by 20 publications

References 16 publications

Geometry-based navigation in the dark: Layout symmetry facilitates spatial learning in the house cricket,Acheta domesticus, in the absence of visual cues

Geometry-based navigation in the dark: Layout symmetry facilitates spatial learning in the house cricket,Acheta domesticus, in the absence of visual cues

The internal maps of insects

Recruitment-dance signals draw larger audiences when honey bee colonies have multiple patrilines

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