Does Imprecision in The Waggle Dance Fit Patterns Predicted by The Tuned-Error Hypothesis

The waggle dance of the honey bee is used to recruit nest mates to a resource, though direction indicated for a resource may vary greatly within a single dance. Some authors suggest that this variation exits as an adaptation to distribute recruits across a patch of flowers, and that, due to the vari...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of insect behavior 2010-05, Vol.23 (3), p.180-188
Main Authors: Tanner, David A, Visscher, P. Kirk
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adaptation
Agriculture
Animal behavior
Animal communication
Animal Ecology
Animal ethology
Animal productions
Apiculture
bee dances
Bees
Behavioral Sciences
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
breeding sites
Entomology
Evolutionary Biology
flowers
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hypothesis testing
Insecta
Invertebrates
Life Sciences
nests
Neurobiology
prediction
Protozoa. Invertebrata
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Terrestrial animal productions
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The waggle dance of the honey bee is used to recruit nest mates to a resource, though direction indicated for a resource may vary greatly within a single dance. Some authors suggest that this variation exits as an adaptation to distribute recruits across a patch of flowers, and that, due to the variation's inverse relationship with distance, the shape of the recruit distribution will remain constant for resources at different distances. In this study, we test this hypothesis by examining how variation in the indication of direction and distance changes with respect to distance. We find that imprecision in the communication of direction does not diminish rapidly enough to accommodate an adaptive-error hypothesis, and we also find that variation in the indication of distance has a positive relationship with the distance of a resource from the hive.
ISSN:0892-7553
1572-8889
DOI:10.1007/s10905-010-9204-1