The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective.

Randolf Menzel

doi:10.3390/insects10120424

Abstract

The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the waggle run relative to the sun azimuth or to gravity, as well as the number of waggles per run, have been tentatively related to peculiar behavioral patterns in both solitary and social insect species and are thought to reflect phylogenetic pre-adaptations. Here, I ask whether these thoughts can be substantiated from a functional perspective. Communication in the waggle dance is a group phenomenon involving the dancer and the followers that perform partially overlapping movements encoding and decoding the message respectively. It is thus assumed that the dancer and follower perform close cognitive processes. This provides us with access to these cognitive processes during dance communication because the follower can be tested in its flight performance when it becomes a recruit. I argue that the dance message and the landscape experience are processed in the same navigational memory, allowing the bee to fly novel direct routes, a property understood as an indication of a cognitive map.

Highlights

Karl von Frisch discovered that European honeybees perform a waggle dance that communicates at least to the experimenter, the direct flight path to the indicated goal [1])
It was difficult for Karl von Frisch and his co-workers to prove that the dance message was received and applied by the bees following the dance—the recruits—since the necessary methods were not available at that time to fully exclude any guidance by odors
I propose a cognitive view of waggle dance communication

Summary

Introduction

Karl von Frisch discovered that European honeybees perform a waggle dance that communicates at least to the experimenter, the direct flight path to the indicated goal (a feeding site or a new nesting site) [1]). If the attending bee has gained such experience of the indicated location (e.g., how rich the feeding site is, what odor it has, how the flower is to be manipulated, whether nectar or pollen is to be collected, etc.) she may make her decision about whether she will follow the dance information dependent on that experience [6] In such a case, the recruit would have certain expectations regarding the place, and regarding its properties and the landscape characteristics she can expect to encounter en route to, and around, that location. The recruit would have certain expectations regarding the place, and regarding its properties and the landscape characteristics she can expect to encounter en route to, and around, that location From these contrasting formulations it becomes clear that completely different assumptions can be made about the cognitive processes involved in an egocentric vs allocentric communication process, decision-making, and subsequent navigation. The recruit would learn a simulated outbound flight by repeating the movements of the dancer, store it as an intended flight, and apply it

Functional Components and Phylogenetic Routes of the Waggle Dance

What Are Intentions and Do Honeybees Have Intentions?

Where the Information Comes From

The Memory About the Landscape as a Cognitive Map

What Needs to Be Asked?

Conclusions