Abstract
All honeybee species make use of the waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to both food sources and potential new nest sites. When foraging, all species face an identical problem: conveying information about profitable floral patches. However, profound differences in nesting biology (some nest in cavities while others nest in the open, often on a branch or a cliff face) may mean that species have different requirements when dancing to advertise new nest sites. In cavity nesting species, nest sites are a precise location in the landscape: usually a small opening leading to a cavity in a hollow tree. Dances for cavities therefore need to be as precise as possible. In contrast, when the potential nest site comprises a tree or perhaps seven a patch of trees, precision is less necessary. Similarly, when a food patch is advertised, dances need not be very precise, as floral patches are often large, unless they are so far away that recruits need more precise information to be able to locate them. In this paper, we study the dance precision of the open-nesting red dwarf bee Apis florea. By comparing the precision of dances for food sources and nest sites, we show that A. florea workers dance with the same imprecision irrespective of context. This is in sharp contrast with the cavity-nesting Apis mellifera that increases the precision of its dance when advertising a potential new home. We suggest that our results are in accordance with the hypothesis that the honeybees’ dance communication initially evolved to convey information about new nest sites and was only later adapted for the context of foraging.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akratanakul P (1977) The natural history of the dwarf honey bee, Apis florea F. in Thailand. PhD thesis Department of Entomology. Cornell University, Ithaca, pp 88
Beckers R, Deneubourg JL, Gross S, Pasteels JM (1990) Collective decision making through food recruitment. Insectes Soc 37:258
Beekman M, Doyen L, Oldroyd BP (2005) Increase in dance imprecision with decreasing foraging distance in the honey-bee Apis mellifera L. is partly explained by physical constraints. J Comp Physiol A 191:1107–1113
Beekman M, Lew JB (2008) Foraging in honeybees—when does it pay to dance? Behav Ecol (in press). DOI 10.1093/beheco/arm117
Beekman M, Ratnieks FLW (2000) Long range foraging by the honeybee Apis mellifera L. Funct Ecol 14:490–496
Beekman M, Sumpter DJT, Seraphides N, Ratnieks FLW (2004) Comparing foraging behaviour of small and large honey bee colonies by decoding waggle dances made by foragers. Funct Ecol 18:829–835
Detrain C, Deneubourg JL (2002) Complexity of environment and parsimony of decision rules in insect societies. Biol Bull 202:268–274
Dyer FC (1985) Mechanisms of dance orientation in the Asian honey bee Apis florea. J Comp Physiol A 157:183–198
Dyer FC (2002) The biology of the dance language. Annu Rev Entomol 47:917–949
Dyer FC, Seeley TD (1989) On the evolution of the dance language. Am Nat 133:580–590
Dyer FC, Seeley TD (1991) Dance dialects and foraging range in three Asian honey bee species. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 28:227–233
Esch HE, Zhang S, Srinivasan MV, Tautz J (2001) Honeybee dances communicate distances measured by optic flow. Nature 411:581–583
Gardner KE, Seeley TD, Calderone NW (2007) Hypotheses on the adaptiveness or non-adaptiveness of the directional imprecision in the honey bee’s waggle dance (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis mellifera). Entomol Gen 29:285–298
Haldane JBS, Spurway H (1954) A statistical analysis of communication in ‘Apis mellifera’ and a comparison with communication in other animals. Insectes Soc 1:247–283
Hölldobler B, Wilson EO (1990) The ants. Belknap, Cambridge MA
Koeniger N, Koeniger G, Punchihewa RWK, Fabritius M, Fabritius M (1982) Observations and experiments on the dance communication in Apis florea in Sri Lanka. J Apic Res 21:45–52
Lindauer M (1955) Schwarmbienen auf Wohnungssuche. Z vergl Physiol 37:263–324
Lindauer M (1956) Über die verständigung bei Indischen Bienen. Z vergl Physiol 38:521–557
Michener CD (1974) The social behavior of the bees. A comparative study. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Nieh JC (1999) Stingless-bee communication. Am Sci 87:428–435
Nieh JC (2004) Recruitment communication in stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini). Apidologie 35:159–182
Oldroyd BP, Wongsiri S (2006) Asian honey bees. Biology, conservation and human interactions. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Punchihewa RWK, Koeniger N, Kevan PG, Gadawski RM (1985) Observations on the dance communication and natural foraging ranges of Apis cerana, Apis dorsata and Apis florea in Sri Lanka. J Apic Res 24:168–175
Raffiudin R, Crozier RH (2007) Phylogenetic analysis of honey bee behavioral evolution. Mol Phyl Evol 43:543–552
Rinderer TE, Wongsiri S, Kuang B, Liu J, Oldroyd BP, Sylvester HA, Guzman de LI (1996) Comparative nest architecture of the dwarf honey bees. J Apic Res 35:19–26
Seeley TD (1995) The wisdom of the hive. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Seeley TD, Visscher PK (1988) Assessing the benefits of cooperation in honeybee foraging: search costs, forage quality, and competitive ability. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 22:229–237
Srinivasan MV, Zhang S, Altwein M, Tautz J (2000) Honeybee navigation: nature and calibration of the ‘odometer’. Science 287:851–853
Tanner DA, Visscher PK (2006) Do honey bees tune error in their dances in nectar-foraging and house-hunting. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 59:571–576
Tautz J, Zhang S, Spaethe J, Brockmann A, Si A, Srinivasan MV (2004) Honeybee odometry: performance in varying natural terrain. PLoS Biol 2:915–923
Towne WF, Gould JL (1988) The spatial precision of the honeybee’s dance communication. J Insect Behav 1:129–155
Visscher PK, Seeley TD (1982) Foraging strategy of honeybee colonies in a temperate deciduous forest. Ecology 63:1790–1801
von Frisch K (1967) The dance language and orientation of bees. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Waddington KD, Visscher PK, Herbert TJ, Raveret Richter M (1994) Comparisons of forager distributions from matched honey bee colonies in suburban environments. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 35:423–429
Weidenmüller A, Seeley TD (1999) Imprecision in waggle dances of the honeybee (Apis mellifera) for nearby food sources: error or adaptation. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 46:190–199
Winston ML (1987) The biology of the honey bee. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank members of the social insects lab at Sydney University and Sharoni Shafir for constructive comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Sorasak Nak-eam collected most of the colonies we studied. We thank the Department of Biology at Naresuan University for the use of their facilities. MB is supported by the Australian Research Council. Additional financial support to MB and BPO was obtained from the University of Sydney.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by M. Giurfa
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beekman, M., Gloag, R.S., Even, N. et al. Dance precision of Apis florea—clues to the evolution of the honeybee dance language?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62, 1259–1265 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0554-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0554-z