Dance Communication Research Articles

The biology of the dance language.

Honey bee foragers dance to communicate the spatial location of food and other resources to their nestmates. This remarkable communication system has long served as an important model system for studying mechanisms and evolution of complex behavior. I provide a broad synthesis of recent research on dance communication, concentrating on the areas that are currently the focus of active research. Specific issues considered are as follows: (a) the sensory and integrative mechanisms underlying the processing of spatial information in dance communication, (b) the role of dance communication in regulating the recruitment of workers to resources in the environment, (c) the evolution of the dance language, and (d) the adaptive fine-tuning of the dance for efficient spatial communication.

Intracolonial kin discrimination in honeybees: do bees dance with their supersisters?

Although kinship discrimination and nepotism have been extensively investigated in honeybees, Apis mellifera L., the significance of kin discrimination among worker bees is still unclear. One of the behavioural contexts in which nepotistic behaviour of worker bees has been described is the dance communication system: bees were reported to have a strong tendency to dance with their supersisters in colonies consisting of only two subfamilies. Using molecular markers, we reinvestigated this apparent case of nepotism. We found no evidence for subfamily discrimination among dancers and their followers in a colony consisting of only two subfamilies or in a colony consisting of 17 subfamilies.

Honey bee dance communication: waggle run direction coded in antennal contacts?

The behaviour of 38 honeybee dance followers and the patterns of antennal contact between followers and dancer were monitored during ten waggle runs for a feeding site 1200 m from the hive. The analysis was restricted to waggle runs with a maximum of 5 followers, allowing the followers to choose between different positions around the dancer. At the beginning of the waggle run, followers are rather evenly spaced around the dancer. During the waggle run, the followers tend to accumulate at the rear end of the dancer. At the end of the waggle run, all followers are found in a ±60° arc behind the dancer. The body orientation angles of the followers depend on their position relative to the dancer. The follower bees have intense antennal contact with the dancer. At least one temporal parameter of the contact pattern may inform the followers about their position relative to the dancer, may guide the dance followers to the rear end of the dancer and may allow them to extract information about the location of the food source advertised by the dance. The role of antennal contact for dance communication appears to have been underestimated in previous studies.

Modelling collective foraging by means of individual behaviour rules in honey-bees

An individual-oriented model is constructed which simulates the collective foraging behaviour of a colony of honey-bees, Apis mellifera. Each bee follows the same set of behavioural rules. Each rule consists of a set of conditions followed by the behavioural act to be performed if the conditions are fulfilled. The set of conditions comprises the state of external information available to the bee (e.g. the dancing of other bees) and internal information variables (like memorised location of a food source and homing motivation). The rules are partly observational (i.e. they capture the observable regularities between the present external information and the individual bee's behaviour), and partly involve hypothesised internal-state variables (e.g. abandoning tendency and homing motivation), because no observable (physiological) aspect has as yet been detected in the bee which correlates with changes in the internal motivation. Our aim is to obtain a set of rules that is necessary and sufficient for the generation of the collective foraging behaviour observed in real bees. We simulated an experiment performed by Seeley et al. in which a colony of honey-bees chooses between two nectar sources of different profitabilities which are switched at intervals. A good fit between observed and simulated collective forager patterns was obtained when the model included rules in which the bees (1) relied on the information acquired from previous flights to a source (e.g. profitability and time of day when the source was found), (2) used positional information obtained by attending recruitment dances and (3) did not abandon a (temporarily) deteriorated source too fast or too slowly. The significance of the following issues is discussed: the role of internal and external information, source profitability, the spatial precision of the dance communication, the ability to search for a source after the source position has been transmitted, the tendency to abandon a deteriorated source, and the concepts of scout, recruit, (un)employed forager, and foraging history.

Learning and memory in honeybees: from behavior to neural substrates.

Learning and memory in honeybees is analyzed on five levels, using a top-down approach. (a) Observatory learning is applied during navigation and dance communication. (b) Local cues at the feeding site are learned associatively. (c) Classical conditioning of the proboscis extension response to olfactory stimuli provides insight into behavioral, neural, and neuropharmacological mechanisms of associative learning. (d) At the neural level, the pathways coding the conditioned and the unconditioned stimulus are identified. The reinforcing function of the unconditioned stimulus is traced to a particular neuron. (e) At the cellular level, the cAMP pathway is found to be critically involved. Nitric oxide is an essential mediator for the transfer from short- to long-term memory.

Genic control of honey bee dance language dialect

Behavioural genetic analysis of honey bee dance language shows simple Mendelian genic control over certain dance dialect differences. Worker honey bees of one parent colony (yellow) changed from round to transition dances for foraging distances of 20 m and from transition to waggle dances at 40 m. Worker bees of the other parent colony (black) made these shifts at 30 m and 90 m, respectively. F1 colonies behaved identically to their yellow parent, suggesting dominance. Progeny of backcrossing between the F1 generation and the putative recessive black parent assorted to four classes, indicating that the dialect differences studied are regulated by genes at two unlinked loci, each having two alleles. Honey bee dance communication is complex and highly integrated behaviour. Nonetheless, analysis of a small element of this behaviour, variation in response to distance, suggests that dance communication is regulated by subsets consisting of simple genic systems.

Learning and memory in the honeybee

Insects are favorable subjects for neuroethological studies. Their nervous systems are relatively small and contain many individually identifiable cells. The CNS is highly compartmentalized with clear separations between multisensory higher order neuropiles in the brain and neuropiles serving sensory-motor routines in the ventral cord (Huber, 1974). The rich behavior of insects includes orientation in space and time, visual, chemical, and mechanical communication, and complex motor routines for flying, walking, swimming, nest building, defense, and attack. Learning and memory, though, are not usually considered to be a strong point of insects. Rather, insect behavior is often regarded as highly stereotyped and under tight control of genetically programmed neural circuits. This view, however, does not do justice to the insect order of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants). Most Hymenopteran species care for their brood either as individual females or as a social group of females. Consequently, they regularly return to their nest site to feed, protect, and nurse the larvae, store food, and hide from adverse environmental conditions. Since they search for food (prey; nectar and pollen on flowers) at unpredictable sites, they have to learn the celestial and terrestrial cues that guide their foraging trips over long distances and allow them to find their nest sites (central place foraging; von Frisch, 1967; Seeley, 1985). They learn to relate the sun's position and sky pattern of polarized light to the time of the day (Lindauer, 1959), and landmarks are learned in relationship to the nest site within the framework of the time-compensated sun compass. The honeybee communicates direction and distance of a feeding place to hive mates by performing a ritualized body movement, the waggle dance (von Frisch, 1967). Associative learning is an essential component of the bee's central place foraging behavior and dance communication. Hive mates attending a dance performance learn the odor emanating from the dancing bee and seek it at the indicated food site. The odor, color, and shape of flowers are learned when the bee experiences these stimuli shortly before it finds food (nectar, pollen). This appetitive learning in bees has many characteristics of associative learning well known from mammalian learning studies (Menzel, 1985, 1990; Bitterman, 1988). It follows the rules of classical and operant conditioning, respectively, so that stimuli or behavioral acts are associated with evaluating stimuli. Since associative learning, especially of the classical type, is well described at the phenomenological and operational level (Rescorla, 1988), it provides a favorable approach in the search for the neural substrate underlying learning and memory.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Hearing in the Asian honeybeesApis dorsata andApis florea

In the dance language of the western honeybee,Apis mellifera, airborne near field sound signals and a sense of hearing are used to communicate the locations of food sources. In the Asian honeybeeApis dorsata similar acoustical signals have been found recently, whereasApis florea does not emit dance sounds to transfer information about the location of food sources. The aim of the present study was to investigate the sense of hearing in these two species. Operant conditioning experiments reveal that both species are able to detect such near field sounds. The results support the hypothesis of acoustical communication inApis dorsata. The auditory sense ofApis florea, which does not use acoustical signals in the dance language, is discussed as a preadaptation for the evolution of an acoustical dance communication in ancestral honeybees.

Colony migration in the tropical honey beeApis dorsata F. (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

To obtain insights into the organization and adaptive significance of seasonal migration by colonies of the giant honey bee,Apis dorsata, we monitored the arrivals and departures of colonies in a rain forest habitat in northeastern Thailand, compared patterns of honey bee abundance with other measures of habitat variability, and observed the role of dance communication in organizing the migratory departure of a colony. Colonies arrived in the area during the end of the dry season, reproduced, and then departed early in the rainy season. During the immigration phase, early-arriving colonies stayed only temporarily, as if assessing habitat quality. Colonies departing after a long stay always left barren combs behind, suggesting that they had left in response to deteriorating resource quality. These observations support the idea that migration allows colonies to track seasonally varying resources in different regions. Our observations of a colony preparing for migration revealed that the dance language is involved in organizing the colony's departure, but that dancers signal only the direction to be taken, rather than, as in dances to feeding sites, both the direction and distance of a particular location.

Associative learning in honey bees

in spatial orientation and learning during dance communication, but the mechanisms of this kind of learning are little understood. In associative learning, stimuli experienced immediately before the reward (usually sucrose solution) are memorized for the guidance of future behavior. Well-established paradigms have been used to characterize operant and classical conditioning. The classical conditioning of olfactory stimuli is a very effective form of learning in bees and has helped to describe the behavioral and physiological basis of memory formation. It is concluded that memory needs time to be established and is processed in sequential phases. The neuronal compartments of the brain involved in the chemosensory pathway appear to participate differently in the sequential memory phases. A model is developed which assigns the strong non-associative components in olfactory conditioning to the antennal lobes, and the associative components to the mushroom bodies and the lateral output region of the protocerebrum. It is speculated that the amnesia-sensitive memory resides in the mushroom bodies and the amnesia-resistant memory in certain structures (eg the lateral protocerebrum) perhaps together with the mushroom bodies.

The dance language of the honeybee mutant diminutive wings

The dance communication of honeybees was studied using the short-winged mutant diminutive wings. The wing area of the mutant is reduced to 67% that of the wild type. This reduction in wing area leads to increases in both the wing beat frequency and the frequency of the sounds emitted during the dances. At the same time the amplitude of the sound signals is reduced. These changes have a strong effect on the recruitment success of the dances, which is reduced to less than 50%. Thus, the acoustical signals emitted by dancing bees play an essential role in the bees' dance communication.

Hearing in honeybees: operant conditioning and spontaneous reactions to airborne sound

Airborne sound signals emitted by dancing bees (Apis mellifera) play an essential role in the bees' dance communication. It has been shown earlier that bees can learn to respond to airborne sounds in an aversive conditioning paradigm. Here we present a new training paradigm. A Y-choice situation was used to determine the frequency range and amplitude thresholds of hearing in bees. In addition, spontaneous reactions of bees to airborne sound were observed and used to determine thresholds of hearing. Both methods revealed that bees are able to detect sound frequencies up to about 500 Hz. The hearing threshold is 100–300 mm/s peak-to-peak velocity and is roughly constant over the range of detectable frequencies. The amplitude of the signals emitted in the dance language is 5 to 10 times higher, so we can conclude that bees can easily detect the dance sounds.

Hearing in Honey Bees: Detection of Air-Particle Oscillations

Although the airborne sounds produced by dancing honey bees seem essential in the bees' dance communication, attempts to show directly that bees can detect airborne sounds have been unsuccessful. It is shown here that bees can in fact detect airborne sounds and that they do so by detecting air-particle movements. Most vertebrates, by contrast, detect pressure oscillations. Because all traveling sound waves have both components, either can be used in sound detection. The bees' acoustic sense appears to be sensitive enough to allow bees to detect the air-particle movements that occur within several millimeters of a sound-emitting dancer.

Significance of Analyses of Verbal Communication in Learning Creative Dance

Significance of Analyses of Verbal Communication in Learning Creative Dance

The spatial precision of the honey bees' dance communication

Many social insect species that employ directional recruitment to food finds communicate the location of their targets with seemingly needless imprecision. Here we present evidence that the spatial precision of the honey bees' dance communication has been “tuned” by selection so that recruits are neither so accurate that they usually find areas which have already been depleted nor so inaccurate that they usually fail to find the advertised resources altogether. First, the bees' distance errors are similar in magnitude to their directional errors, and their angular errors decrease greatly with increasing distance to the target (decreasing more than fourfold between 100 and 700 m). As a result, the absolute scatter of recruits remains relatively constant with changing distance to the target (increasing by less than 50% between 100 and 700 m). This is to be expected if the optimal level of imprecision is the same for distance and direction and does not change with the distance of the target from the nest. Second, comparative studies involving three tropical- and one temperate-zone species (all Apis)suggest that the precision of the bees' languages may have been tuned in accordance with the spatial characteristics of the resources each species uses. We suggest that both the round dance, which conveys no directional information for nearby targets, and the high angular divergence in waggle dances indicating targets within several hundred meters of the colony are both understandable in this context.

Mechanisms of dance orientation in the Asian honey beeApis florea L.

Early studies of dance communication inApis florea had shown that waggle dances are not performed on a vertical plane and oriented to gravity, as in the other species ofApis, but instead take place on the flattened top of the exposed comb and are oriented to celestial cues directly. More recent experiments showed thatA. florea can dance in the absence of a view of the sun or blue sky, but did not establish what mechanism permitted this orientation. I now report that dances can be oriented directly to landmarks visible from the nest, the first evidence of an environmental feature other than celestial cues or gravity being involved in dance orientation. Landmarks near the nest are probably used to refer to celestial cues, in a fashion analogous to the use of broad features of the landscape by honeybees in order to learn the sun's course, which permits them to determine their flight angle on overcast days or at night, and to compensate accurately for solar movement.Apis florea may therefore be able to learn the sun's course with respect to two sets of landmarks.

Honey Production and Underlying Nectar Harvesting Activities of Africanized and European Honeybees

SummaryComparisons of Africanized and European honeybees (Apis mellifera) were made during two periods of different nectar availability in tropical dry forest in Venezuela. Field colonies were used to study honey yields, nectar-load characteristics, and flight activity including flight initiation and cessation. Observation-hive colonies were used to study dance communication and recruitment. Throughout these various measurements significant interactions occurred between geographic type of bee and period of nectar availability. Generally, in conditions of good nectar availability, European bees collected more and larger nectar loads, and produced more honey/colony/day than Africanized bees, possibly because of their more intensive recruitment of foragers. Africanized bees were marginally superior for some variables in conditions of low nectar availability. The results support the conclusion that, based on honey production alone, the European honeybee is the more desirable bee for use in commercial beekeeping.

Observations on the Dance Communication and Natural Foraging Ranges ofApis Cerana, Apis DorsataandApis Floreain Sri Lanka

SummaryThe dance communication of Asiatic honeybees is qualitatively similar to that of Apis mellifera. However, in A. cerana and A. florea foraging at artificial feeders the dance tempo was observed to decline (i.e., the time per dance increased) more rapidly than has been reported for A. mellifera as distance to the food source increased. Apis cerana and A. florea forage over short distances; at 3 of the 6 sites in this trial A. cerana did not visit feeders beyond 500 m. In A. dorsata the change in dance tempo with increasing distance to forage was much slower and similar, in this respect, to that reported for A. mellifera. Both A. dorsata and A. mellifera are able to forage over long distances, although in this trial 72% of A. dorsata foragers did not fly beyond 400 m. Apis cerana and A. florea may be unable to communicate long distances to food sources, as these distances would be indicated by very slow dances. These potential intrinsic limits, and observed constraints on foraging distance in A. cerana, suggests that beekeepers should manage A. cerana in small, well separated apiaries. In this way floral resources over small areas would not become so depleted by high densities of bees that honey yields are reduced.

Kinesthetic Communication in Dance

“Dance is movement that has been organized so that it is rewarding to behold,” writes Anderson (1974, p. 9), and many of those who talk or write about dance have attempted to explain the way in which dance rewards the beholder by considering the processes by which dance communicates. Anderson goes on to say: “…dance communicates because it prompts responses within us. Dance is not simply a visual art, it is kinesthetic as well; it appeals to our inherent sense of motion” (p. 9). This distinction between visual and kinesthetic communication is one which many dancers find appealing. The kinesthetic communication is not analyzed further, but rather, it becomes an easy way of stating the special status of dance as an art form. That is, there is a special sense for which only dance can provide aesthetic satisfaction.

Sun Compensation by Bees

In both their navigation and dance communication, bees are able to compensate for the sun's movement. When foragers are prevented from seeing the sun for 2 hours, they compensate by extrapolation, using the sun's rate of movement when last observed. These and other data suggest a time-averaging processing strategy in honey bee orientation.