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Dormagen DM, Wild B, Wario F, Landgraf T. Machine learning reveals the waggle drift's role in the honey bee dance communication system. PNAS NEXUS 2023; 2:pgad275. [PMID: 37746326 PMCID: PMC10516631 DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad275] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/02/2023] [Accepted: 08/02/2023] [Indexed: 09/26/2023]
Abstract
The honey bee waggle dance is one of the most prominent examples of abstract communication among animals: successful foragers convey new resource locations to interested followers via characteristic "dance" movements in the nest, where dances advertise different locations on different overlapping subregions of the "dance floor." To this day, this spatial separation has not been described in detail, and it remains unknown how it affects the dance communication. Here, we evaluate long-term recordings of Apis mellifera foraging at natural and artificial food sites. Using machine learning, we detect and decode waggle dances, and we individually identify and track dancers and dance followers in the hive and at artificial feeders. We record more than a hundred thousand waggle phases, and thousands of dances and dance-following interactions to quantitatively describe the spatial separation of dances on the dance floor. We find that the separation of dancers increases throughout a dance and present a motion model based on a positional drift of the dancer between subsequent waggle phases that fits our observations. We show that this separation affects follower bees as well and results in them more likely following subsequent dances to similar food source locations, constituting a positive feedback loop. Our work provides evidence that the positional drift between subsequent waggle phases modulates the information that is available to dance followers, leading to an emergent optimization of the waggle dance communication system.
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Affiliation(s)
- David M Dormagen
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
| | - Benjamin Wild
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
| | - Fernando Wario
- Department of Electronics, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, 44430 Jalisco, Mexico
| | - Tim Landgraf
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
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Dong S, Lin T, Nieh JC, Tan K. A Method for Studying Social Signal Learning of the Waggle Dance in Honey Bees. Bio Protoc 2023; 13:e4789. [PMID: 37638302 PMCID: PMC10450786 DOI: 10.21769/bioprotoc.4789] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Revised: 05/13/2023] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 08/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Honey bees use a complex form of spatial referential communication. Their waggle dance communicates to nestmates the direction, distance, and quality of a resource by encoding celestial cues, retinal optic flow, and relative food value into motion and sound within the nest. This protocol was developed to investigate the potential for social learning of this waggle dance. Using this protocol, we showed that correct waggle dancing requires social learning. Bees (Apis mellifera) that did not follow any dances before they first danced produced significantly more disordered dances, with larger waggle angle divergence errors, and encoded distance incorrectly. The former deficits improved with experience, but distance encoding was set for life. The first dances of bees that could follow other dancers had none of these impairments. Social learning, therefore, shapes honey bee signaling, as it does communication in human infants, birds, and multiple other vertebrate species. However, much remains to be learned about insects' social learning, and this protocol will help to address knowledge gaps in the understanding of sophisticated social signal learning, particularly in understanding the molecular bases for such learning. Key features It was unclear if honey bees (Apis mellifera) could improve their waggle dance by following experienced dancers before they first waggle dance. Honey bees perform their first waggle dances with more errors if they cannot follow experienced waggle dancers first. Directional and disorder errors improved over time, but distance error was maintained. Bees in experimental colonies continued to communicate longer distances than control bees. Dancing correctly, with less directional error and disorder, requires social learning. Distance encoding in the honey bee dance is largely genetic but may also include a component of cultural transmission.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shihao Dong
- CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China
| | - Tao Lin
- CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China
| | - James C. Nieh
- School of Biological Sciences, Department of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Ken Tan
- CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China
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3
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Bare and Constructional Compositionality. INT J PRIMATOL 2023. [DOI: 10.1007/s10764-022-00343-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Abstract
AbstractThis paper proposes a typology of compositionality as manifest in human language and animal communication. At the heart of the typology is a distinction between bare compositionality, in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined solely by the meanings of its constituents, and constructional compositionality, in which the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituents and also by various aspects of its structure. Bare and constructional compositionality may be observed in human language as well as in various animal communication systems, including primates and birds. Architecturally, bare compositionality provides the foundations for constructional compositionality, while phylogenetically, bare compositionality is a potential starting point for the evolution of constructional compositionality in animal communication and human language.
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Kohl PL, Rutschmann B. Honey bees communicate distance via non-linear waggle duration functions. PeerJ 2021; 9:e11187. [PMID: 33868825 PMCID: PMC8029670 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.11187] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2020] [Accepted: 03/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Honey bees (genus Apis) can communicate the approximate location of a resource to their nestmates via the waggle dance. The distance to a goal is encoded by the duration of the waggle phase of the dance, but the precise shape of this distance-duration relationship is ambiguous: earlier studies (before the 1990s) proposed that it is non-linear, with the increase in waggle duration flattening with distance, while more recent studies suggested that it follows a simple linear function (i.e. a straight line). Strikingly, authors of earlier studies trained bees to much longer distances than authors of more recent studies, but unfortunately they usually measured the duration of dance circuits (waggle phase plus return phase of the dance), which is only a correlate of the bees’ distance signal. We trained honey bees (A. mellifera carnica) to visit sugar feeders over a relatively long array of distances between 0.1 and 1.7 km from the hive and measured the duration of both the waggle phase and the return phase of their dances from video recordings. The distance-related increase in waggle duration was better described by a non-linear model with a decreasing slope than by a simple linear model. The relationship was equally well captured by a model with two linear segments separated at a “break-point” at 1 km distance. In turn, the relationship between return phase duration and distance was sufficiently well described by a simple linear model. The data suggest that honey bees process flight distance differently before and beyond a certain threshold distance. While the physiological and evolutionary causes of this behavior remain to be explored, our results can be applied to improve the estimation of honey bee foraging distances based on the decoding of waggle dances.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick L Kohl
- Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
| | - Benjamin Rutschmann
- Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
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Evans JC, Silk MJ, Boogert NJ, Hodgson DJ. Infected or informed? Social structure and the simultaneous transmission of information and infectious disease. OIKOS 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/oik.07148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/06/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Julian C. Evans
- Dept of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Univ. of Zurich Switzerland
| | - Matthew J. Silk
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, Univ. of Exeter Penryn Campus UK
- Environment and Sustainability Inst., Univ. of Exeter Penryn Campus UK
| | | | - David J. Hodgson
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, Univ. of Exeter Penryn Campus UK
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Kohl PL, Thulasi N, Rutschmann B, George EA, Steffan-Dewenter I, Brockmann A. Adaptive evolution of honeybee dance dialects. Proc Biol Sci 2020; 287:20200190. [PMID: 32126959 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Efficient communication is highly important for the evolutionary success of social animals. Honeybees (genus Apis) are unique in that they communicate the spatial information of resources using a symbolic 'language', the waggle dance. Different honeybee species differ in foraging ecology but it remains unknown whether this shaped variation in the dance. We studied distance dialects-interspecific differences in how waggle duration relates to flight distance-and tested the hypothesis that these evolved to maximize communication precision over the bees' foraging ranges. We performed feeder experiments with Apis cerana, A. florea and A. dorsata in India and found that A. cerana had the steepest dialect, i.e. a rapid increase in waggle duration with increasing feeder distance, A. florea had an intermediate, and A. dorsata had the lowest dialect. By decoding dances for natural food sites, we inferred that the foraging range was smallest in A. cerana, intermediate in A. florea and largest in A. dorsata. The inverse correlation between foraging range and dialect was corroborated when comparing six (sub)species across the geographical range of the genus including previously published data. We conclude that dance dialects constitute adaptations resulting from a trade-off between the spatial range and the spatial accuracy of communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick L Kohl
- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India.,Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
| | - Neethu Thulasi
- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India.,Department of Apiculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India
| | - Benjamin Rutschmann
- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India.,Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
| | - Ebi A George
- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India
| | - Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter
- Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
| | - Axel Brockmann
- National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bellary Road, Bangalore 560065, India
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Zhang ZY, Li Z, Huang Q, Zhang XW, Ke L, Yan WY, Zhang LZ, Zeng ZJ. Deltamethrin Impairs Honeybees (Apis mellifera) Dancing Communication. ARCHIVES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINATION AND TOXICOLOGY 2020; 78:117-123. [PMID: 31642948 DOI: 10.1007/s00244-019-00680-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2019] [Accepted: 10/03/2019] [Indexed: 05/21/2023]
Abstract
As a commonly used pyrethroid insecticide, deltamethrin is very toxic to honeybees, which seriously threatens the managed and feral honeybee population. Because deltamethrin is a nerve agent, it may interfere with the nervous system of honeybees, such as dance behavior and memory-related characteristics. We found that the waggle dances were less precise in honeybees that consumed syrup containing deltamethrin (pesticide group) than those that consumed normal sucrose syrup (control group). Compared with the control group, honeybees of the pesticide group significantly increased number of circuits per 15 s, the divergence angle, return phases in waggle dances, as well as the crop content of the dance followers. Furthermore, six learning and memory-related genes were significantly interfered with the gene expression levels. Our data suggest that the sublethal dose of deltamethrin impaired the honeybees' learning and memory and resulted in cognitive disorder. The novel results assist in establishing guidelines for the risk assessment of pesticide to honeybee safety and prevention of nontarget biological agriculture pesticide poisoning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zu Yun Zhang
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
- Sericultural and Apicultural Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Mengzi, 661101, China
| | - Zhen Li
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
| | - Qiang Huang
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
| | - Xue Wen Zhang
- Sericultural and Apicultural Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Mengzi, 661101, China
| | - Li Ke
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
| | - Wei Yu Yan
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
| | - Li Zhen Zhang
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China
| | - Zhi Jiang Zeng
- Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China.
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Phase transitions and asymmetry between signal comprehension and production in biological communication. Sci Rep 2019; 9:3428. [PMID: 30837574 PMCID: PMC6401316 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-40141-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2018] [Accepted: 02/11/2019] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Abstract
We introduce a model for collective information acquisition from the environment, in a biological population. In this model, individuals can make noisy observations of the environment, and communicate their observation by production and comprehension of signals. As the communication noise decreases, the model shows an order-disorder transition from a disordered phase in which no consensus about the environmental state exists to an ordered phase where the population forms a consensus about the environmental state. The ordered phase itself is composed of an informed consensus, in which the correct belief about the environment prevails, and an uninformed consensus phase, in which consensus on a random belief about the environmental state is formed. The probability of reaching informed consensus increases with increasing the observation probability. This phenomenology implies that a maximum noise level, and a minimum observation probability are necessary for informed consensus in a communicating population. Furthermore, we show that the fraction of observant individuals needed for the group to reach informed consensus decreases with increasing population size. This results from a shift in the uninformed-informed transition to smaller observation probabilities by increasing population size. Importantly, we also find that an amount of noise in signal production deteriorates the information flow and the inference capability, more than the same amount of noise in comprehension. This finding implies that there is higher selection pressure to reduce noise in production of signals compared to comprehension. Regarding this asymmetry, we propose an experimental design to separately measure comprehension and production noise in a given population and test the predicted asymmetry.
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Klein BA, Vogt M, Unrein K, Reineke DM. Followers of honey bee waggle dancers change their behaviour when dancers are sleep-restricted or perform imprecise dances. Anim Behav 2018. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.10.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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10
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Barron AB, Plath JA. The evolution of honey bee dance communication: a mechanistic perspective. J Exp Biol 2017; 220:4339-4346. [DOI: 10.1242/jeb.142778] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Honey bee dance has been intensively studied as a communication system, and yet we still know very little about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting how dances are produced and interpreted. Here, we discuss how new information on the functions of the central complex (CX) of the insect brain might shed some light on possible neural mechanisms of dance behaviour. We summarise the features of dance communication across the species of the genus Apis. We then propose that neural mechanisms of orientation and spatial processing found to be supported by the CX may function in dance communication also, and that this mechanistic link could explain some specific features of the dance form. This is purely a hypothesis, but in proposing this hypothesis, and how it might be investigated, we hope to stimulate new mechanistic analyses of dance communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew B. Barron
- Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
| | - Jenny Aino Plath
- Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany
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11
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Schürch R, Ratnieks FLW, Samuelson EEW, Couvillon MJ. Dancing to her own beat: honey bee foragers communicate via individually calibrated waggle dances. J Exp Biol 2016; 219:1287-9. [PMID: 26944504 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.134874] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/17/2015] [Accepted: 02/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Communication signals often vary between individuals, even when one expects selection to favour accuracy and precision, such as the honey bee waggle dance, where foragers communicate to nestmates the direction and distance to a resource. Although many studies have examined intra-dance variation, or the variation within a dance, less is known about inter-dance variation, or the variation between dances. This is particularly true for distance communication. Here, we trained individually marked bees from three colonies to forage at feeders of known distances and monitored their dances to determine individual communication variation. We found that each honey bee possesses her own calibration: individual duration-distance calibrations varied significantly in both slopes and intercepts. The variation may incur a cost for communication, such that a dancer and recruit may misunderstand the communicated distance by as much as 50%. Future work is needed to understand better the mechanisms and consequences of individual variation in communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roger Schürch
- Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI), University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK Clinical Trials Unit, University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Francis L W Ratnieks
- Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI), University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK
| | - Elizabeth E W Samuelson
- Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI), University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK
| | - Margaret J Couvillon
- Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI), University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK
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I'Anson Price R, Grüter C. Why, when and where did honey bee dance communication evolve? Front Ecol Evol 2015. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2015.00125] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Schürch R, Ratnieks FLW. The spatial information content of the honey bee waggle dance. Front Hum Neurosci 2015. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2015.00022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Beekman M, Makinson JC, Couvillon MJ, Preece K, Schaerf TM. Honeybee linguistics—a comparative analysis of the waggle dance among species of Apis. Front Ecol Evol 2015. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2015.00011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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