Beekman Madeleine, Doyen Laurent, Oldroyd Benjamin P
School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, A12, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2005 Dec;191(12):1107-13. doi: 10.1007/s00359-005-0034-0. Epub 2005 Jul 28.
Honey bee foragers communicate the direction and distance of both food sources and new nest sites to nest mates by means of a symbolic dance language. Interestingly, the precision by which dancers transfer directional information is negatively correlated with the distance to the advertised food source. The 'tuned-error' hypothesis suggests that colonies benefit from this imprecision as it spreads recruits out over a patch of constant size irrespective of the distance to the advertised site. An alternative to the tuned-error hypothesis is that dancers are physically incapable of dancing with great precision for nearby sources. Here we revisit the tuned-error hypothesis by studying the change in dance precision with increasing foraging distance over relatively short distances while controlling for environmental influences. We show that bees indeed increase their dance precision with the increase in foraging distance. However, we also show that dance performed by swarm-scouts for a nearby (30 m) nest site, where there could be no benefit to imprecision, are either without or with only limited directional information. This result suggests that imprecision in dance communication is caused primarily by physical constraints in the ability of dancers to turn around quickly enough when the advertised site is nearby.
蜜蜂采集者通过一种象征性的舞蹈语言向巢友传达食物源和新巢址的方向及距离。有趣的是，舞者传递方向信息的精确程度与到所通告食物源的距离呈负相关。“调谐误差”假说认为，蜂群从这种不精确性中受益，因为无论到所通告地点的距离如何，它都会使招募的蜜蜂分散在一片大小恒定的区域内。“调谐误差”假说的另一种观点是，舞者在身体上无法针对附近的食物源进行非常精确的舞蹈。在这里，我们通过研究在控制环境影响的情况下，随着觅食距离在相对较短距离内增加，舞蹈精确性的变化，重新审视“调谐误差”假说。我们表明，蜜蜂确实会随着觅食距离的增加而提高舞蹈精确性。然而，我们还表明，蜂群侦察蜂为附近（30米）的巢址所跳的舞蹈，在这种情况下不精确性没有任何益处，要么没有方向信息，要么只有有限的方向信息。这一结果表明，舞蹈交流中的不精确性主要是由舞者在通告地点较近时快速转身能力的身体限制所导致的。
