IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v419y2002i6910d10.1038_nature01127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Honeybee colonies achieve fitness through dancing

Author

Listed:
  • Gavin Sherman

    (University of California)

  • P. Kirk Visscher

    (University of California)

Abstract

The honeybee dance language, in which foragers perform dances containing information about the distance and direction to food sources, is the quintessential example of symbolic communication in non-primates1,2. The dance language has been the subject of controversy3,4, and of extensive research into the mechanisms of acquiring1,5,6, decoding7,8 and evaluating9 the information in the dance. The dance language has been hypothesized, but not shown, to increase colony food collection1,9,10. Here we show that colonies with disoriented dances (lacking direction information) recruit less effectively to syrup feeders than do colonies with oriented dances. For colonies foraging at natural sources, the direction information sometimes increases food collected, but at other times it makes no difference. The food-location information in the dance is presumably important when food sources are hard to find, variable in richness and ephemeral. Recruitment based simply on arousal of foragers and communication of floral odour, as occurs in honeybees1, bumble bees11 and some stingless bees12, can be equally effective under other circumstances. Clarifying the condition-dependent payoffs of the dance language provides new insight into its function in honeybee ecology.

Suggested Citation

  • Gavin Sherman & P. Kirk Visscher, 2002. "Honeybee colonies achieve fitness through dancing," Nature, Nature, vol. 419(6910), pages 920-922, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:419:y:2002:i:6910:d:10.1038_nature01127
    DOI: 10.1038/nature01127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01127
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature01127?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Becher, M.A. & Grimm, V. & Knapp, J. & Horn, J. & Twiston-Davies, G. & Osborne, J.L., 2016. "BEESCOUT: A model of bee scouting behaviour and a software tool for characterizing nectar/pollen landscapes for BEEHAVE," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 340(C), pages 126-133.
    2. Anna Dornhaus, 2011. "Finding optimal collective strategies using individual-based simulations: colony organization in social insects," Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 25-37, May.
    3. Dussutour, Audrey & Nicolis, Stamatios C., 2013. "Flexibility in collective decision-making by ant colonies: Tracking food across space and time," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 32-38.
    4. Sun, Zhe & Wang, Ning & Bi, Yunrui & Srinivasan, Dipti, 2015. "Parameter identification of PEMFC model based on hybrid adaptive differential evolution algorithm," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P2), pages 1334-1341.
    5. Istvan Karsai & Andrew Runciman, 2011. "The ‘common stomach’ as information source for the regulation of construction behaviour of the swarm," Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 13-24, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:419:y:2002:i:6910:d:10.1038_nature01127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.