De Marco Rodrigo, Menzel Randolf
Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Biologie/Chemie/Pharmazie, Institut für Biologie--Neurobiologie, Königin-Luise-Strasse 28-30, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
J Exp Biol. 2005 Oct;208(Pt 20):3885-94. doi: 10.1242/jeb.01832.
Apis mellifera bees execute waggle dances to recruit other bees to desirable food sources. Several components of the waggle dance are correlated with the direction of and the distance to food. Moreover, recruits use the spatial information encoded in the dance to locate the signalled food. However, although dance communication has been studied extensively, little is known about how the dancers combine the compass (direction) and the odometric (distance) information they acquire during the foraging flight. In the present study, we analysed the encoding of spatial information in the waggle dance by manipulating the navigational information provided to dancing bees. To this end, we took advantage of the bees' visually driven odometer. We found that the waggle dance basically encodes information on the distance gauged during the outbound (hive-to-food) flight. However, it does not necessarily refer to a global vector based on path integration of the outbound flight. Whenever the direction connecting the subjective food location and the hive does not match the direction of the global vector, dancers refer to a direction close to that of the shortcut connecting the actual food location and the hive. Moreover, in our experiments, this direction was close to that of the inbound (food-to-hive) flight, indicating that landmark-based information is computed during the inbound flight and that it may strongly affect the encoding of directional information in the waggle dance. Moreover, we found that the bees' experience of the terrain modulates the encoding of spatial information in the waggle dance, suggesting that interactions between path integration and visual landmarks are computed in the context of dance communication.
西方蜜蜂会通过跳摇摆舞来招募其他蜜蜂前往理想的食物源。摇摆舞的几个组成部分与食物的方向和距离相关。此外，被招募的蜜蜂会利用舞蹈中编码的空间信息来定位所指示的食物。然而，尽管对舞蹈交流已经进行了广泛的研究，但对于舞者如何整合它们在觅食飞行中获取的罗盘（方向）和里程计（距离）信息却知之甚少。在本研究中，我们通过操纵提供给跳舞蜜蜂的导航信息，分析了摇摆舞中空间信息的编码。为此，我们利用了蜜蜂的视觉驱动里程计。我们发现，摇摆舞基本上编码了在出巢（从蜂巢到食物）飞行过程中测量的距离信息。然而，它不一定指基于出巢飞行路径整合的全局向量。每当连接主观食物位置和蜂巢的方向与全局向量的方向不匹配时，舞者会参考接近连接实际食物位置和蜂巢的捷径的方向。此外，在我们的实验中，这个方向接近入巢（从食物到蜂巢）飞行的方向，这表明基于地标的信息是在入巢飞行过程中计算出来的，并且它可能会强烈影响摇摆舞中方向信息的编码。此外，我们发现蜜蜂对地形的经验会调节摇摆舞中空间信息的编码，这表明路径整合和视觉地标之间的相互作用是在舞蹈交流的背景下计算出来的。
