Su Songkun, Cai Fang, Si Aung, Zhang Shaowu, Tautz Jürgen, Chen Shenglu
College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
PLoS One. 2008 Jun 4;3(6):e2365. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002365.
The honeybee waggle dance, through which foragers advertise the existence and location of a food source to their hive mates, is acknowledged as the only known form of symbolic communication in an invertebrate. However, the suggestion, that different species of honeybee might possess distinct 'dialects' of the waggle dance, remains controversial. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether different species of honeybee can learn from and communicate with each other. This study reports experiments using a mixed-species colony that is composed of the Asiatic bee Apis cerana cerana (Acc), and the European bee Apis mellifera ligustica (Aml). Using video recordings made at an observation hive, we first confirm that Acc and Aml have significantly different dance dialects, even when made to forage in identical environments. When reared in the same colony, these two species are able to communicate with each other: Acc foragers could decode the dances of Aml to successfully locate an indicated food source. We believe that this is the first report of successful symbolic communication between two honeybee species; our study hints at the possibility of social learning between the two honeybee species, and at the existence of a learning component in the honeybee dance language.
蜜蜂的摇摆舞是觅食者向蜂巢同伴通告食物源的存在和位置的方式，它被认为是无脊椎动物中唯一已知的符号交流形式。然而，关于不同种类的蜜蜂可能拥有不同“方言”的摇摆舞这一观点仍存在争议。此外，不同种类的蜜蜂是否能相互学习和交流也尚不清楚。本研究报告了使用由中华蜜蜂（Acc）和意大利蜜蜂（Aml）组成的混合种群进行的实验。通过在观察蜂箱处进行的录像，我们首先证实，即使在相同环境中觅食，Acc和Aml也有明显不同的舞蹈方言。当在同一个蜂群中饲养时，这两个物种能够相互交流：Acc觅食者能够解读Aml的舞蹈，从而成功找到指示的食物源。我们认为这是关于两种蜜蜂之间成功进行符号交流的首次报道；我们的研究暗示了这两种蜜蜂之间存在社会学习的可能性，以及蜜蜂舞蹈语言中存在学习成分。
