Insects are sentient: bee dances (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 27, 2019, 18:56 (1851 days ago) @ David Turell

They inform hive members in which direction the food source lies and how far:

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-decipher-codify-universal-language-honey.html

"The two assistant professors and their teams have decoded the language of honey bees in such a way that will allow other scientists across the globe to interpret the insects' highly sophisticated and complex communications.

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"the researchers present an extraordinary foundational advance—a universal calibration, or for science fiction aficionados, a "babel fish," that translates honey bee communications across sub-species and landscapes. By deciphering the instructive messages encoded in the insects' movements, called waggle dances, the teams hope to better understand the insects' preferred forages and the location of these food sources.

"'Before we can feed pollinators, we need to know when and where they need food. We must decode waggle dances," said Schürch, the paper's lead author. "So, this is a fundamental first step."

"The researchers analyzed the dances of 85 marked bees from three hives.

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During the waggle dance, a successful forager returns to the hive and communicates the distance and direction from the hive to the food source by performing multiple, repeated figure-eight-like movements called waggle runs.

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"Yet, according to Couvillon and Schürch, different bees conveying the same location can vary their waggle runs, and even individual bees repeating a run may alter their dance. Moreover, bees are inspired to dance only when they have located particularly tantalizing food resources.

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"'While there were differences among populations in how they communicate, it doesn't matter from the bees' perspective," said Schürch. "We cannot tell them apart in terms of how they translate this information. There is huge overlap. In effect, a bee from England would understand a bee from Virginia and would find a food source in the same way with a similar success rate."

"By combining all of their calibration data, Couvillon and Schürch have made their work universal for other researchers, providing scientists around the world with a codex to decipher where bees are collecting food. Such knowledge stands not only to inform best practices for bee-friendly planting, but will be crucial to maintaining their populations."

Comment: Amazing informational ability on the part of bees. Not so amazing that observation by humans translates it into our terms.