Honey bee waggle dance communication increases diversity of pollen diets in intensively managed agricultural landscapes

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (15) ◽  
pp. 3602-3611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Nürnberger ◽  
Alexander Keller ◽  
Stephan Härtel ◽  
Ingolf Steffan‐Dewenter
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Dance Communication ◽  
Intensively Managed

scholarly journals Combined effects of waggle dance communication and landscape heterogeneity on nectar and pollen uptake in honey bee colonies

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Nürnberger ◽  
Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter ◽  
Stephan Härtel
Keyword(s):  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Weight Change ◽  
Landscape Heterogeneity ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Floral Resources ◽  
Foraging Success ◽  
Pollen Foraging ◽  
Dance Communication

The instructive component of waggle dance communication has been shown to increase resource uptake of Apis mellifera colonies in highly heterogeneous resource environments, but an assessment of its relevance in temperate landscapes with different levels of resource heterogeneity is currently lacking. We hypothesized that the advertisement of resource locations via dance communication would be most relevant in highly heterogeneous landscapes with large spatial variation of floral resources. To test our hypothesis, we placed 24 Apis mellifera colonies with either disrupted or unimpaired instructive component of dance communication in eight Central European agricultural landscapes that differed in heterogeneity and resource availability. We monitored colony weight change and pollen harvest as measure of foraging success. Dance disruption did not significantly alter colony weight change, but decreased pollen harvest compared to the communicating colonies by 40%. There was no general effect of resource availability on nectar or pollen foraging success, but the effect of landscape heterogeneity on nectar uptake was stronger when resource availability was high. In contrast to our hypothesis, the effects of disrupted bee communication on nectar and pollen foraging success were not stronger in landscapes with heterogeneous compared to homogenous resource environments. Our results indicate that in temperate regions intra-colonial communication of resource locations benefits pollen foraging more than nectar foraging, irrespective of landscape heterogeneity. We conclude that the so far largely unexplored role of dance communication in pollen foraging requires further consideration as pollen is a crucial resource for colony development and health.

Honey bee waggle dance communication: signal meaning and signal noise affect dance follower behaviour

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasan Al Toufailia ◽  
Margaret J. Couvillon ◽  
Francis L. W. Ratnieks ◽  
Christoph Grüter
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Signal Noise ◽  
Communication Signal ◽  
Dance Communication

scholarly journals Gefährlich und nützlich zugleich: Strategien zum Management der invasiven Robinie

2018 ◽  
Vol 169 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Vítková ◽  
Marco Conedera ◽  
Jiří Sádlo ◽  
Jan Pergl ◽  
Petr Pyšek
Keyword(s):  
Time Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Landscape ◽  
Black Locust ◽  
Robinia Pseudoacacia ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Intensively Managed

Dangerous and useful at the same time: management strategies for the invasive black locust The North American black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is considered controversial as many other introduced tree species because of its both positive and negative properties. Based on a literature review and own data we analyze the occurrence of black locust in Czechia and Switzerland and present the management approaches in place. In both countries, black locust is on the blacklist of invasive introduced species. It can grow in a wide range of habitats from urban and agricultural landscape to dry grassland and forest. Meanwhile, the species became in many places part of the environment and human culture, so that neither unrestricted cultivation nor large-scale eradication is feasible. We suggest a context-dependent management which respects the different needs and takes into account the local environmental conditions, land-use, habitat type, risk of spread as well as economic, cultural and biodiversity aspects. To this purpose we propose three management strategies: 1) control respectively gradual suppression of black locust in forests where the species is not welcome, 2) its eradication in sensitive ecosystems as dry grasslands or clear and dry forests and 3) its tolerance in intensively managed agricultural landscapes and in urban environment.

scholarly journals The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolf Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Insect ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Flight Performance ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Functional Perspective ◽  
Walking Pattern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dance Communication ◽  
Navigational Memory

The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the waggle run relative to the sun azimuth or to gravity, as well as the number of waggles per run, have been tentatively related to peculiar behavioral patterns in both solitary and social insect species and are thought to reflect phylogenetic pre-adaptations. Here, I ask whether these thoughts can be substantiated from a functional perspective. Communication in the waggle dance is a group phenomenon involving the dancer and the followers that perform partially overlapping movements encoding and decoding the message respectively. It is thus assumed that the dancer and follower perform close cognitive processes. This provides us with access to these cognitive processes during dance communication because the follower can be tested in its flight performance when it becomes a recruit. I argue that the dance message and the landscape experience are processed in the same navigational memory, allowing the bee to fly novel direct routes, a property understood as an indication of a cognitive map.

Simulation of the Feedbacks and Regulation of Recruitment Dancing in Honey Bees

1998 ◽  
Vol 01 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Fluctuating Environment ◽  
Worker Allocation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Parameter Values ◽  
Tremble Dance ◽  
Threshold Rule

Honey bee nectar foragers returning to the hive experience a delay as they search for a receiver bee to whom they transfer their material. In this paper I describe the simulation of the "threshold rule" (Seeley, 1995) which relates the magnitude of this search delay to the probability of performing a recriutment dance — waggle dance, tremble dance, or no dance. Results show that this rule leads to self-organised near-optimal worker allocation in a fluctuating environment, is extremely robust, and operates over a wide range of parameter values. The reason for the robustness appears to be the particular sytem of feedbacks that operate within the system.

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