Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers

Floral scents are important information cues used to organize foraging-related tasks in honeybees. The waggle dance, apart from encoding spatial information about food sources, might facilitate the transfer of olfactory information by increasing the dissipation of volatiles brought back by successfu...

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Publicado: 2007
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bee
Acceso en línea:https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz
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spelling paper:paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz2023-06-08T15:34:01Z Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers Apis mellifera Floral scent Information transfer Trophallaxis Waggle dance bee environmental cue foraging behavior olfaction population distribution social insect spatial analysis theoretical study Apis mellifera Apoidea Hexapoda Floral scents are important information cues used to organize foraging-related tasks in honeybees. The waggle dance, apart from encoding spatial information about food sources, might facilitate the transfer of olfactory information by increasing the dissipation of volatiles brought back by successful foragers. By assuming that food scents are more intensive on specific body parts of returning foragers, i.e., the posterior legs of pollen foragers and mouthparts of nectar foragers, we quantified the interactions between hive mates and foragers during dances advertising different types of food sources. For natural sources, a higher proportion of hive mates contacted the hind legs of pollen dancers (where the pollen loads were located) with their heads compared to non-pollen dancers. On the other hand, the proportion of head-to-head contacts was higher for non-pollen foragers during the waggle runs. When the food scent was manipulated, dancers collecting scented sugar solution had a higher proportion of head-to-head contacts and a lower proportion around their hind legs compared to dancers collecting unscented solution. The presence of food odors did not affect in-hive behaviors of dancers, but it increased the number of trophallaxes in-between waggle runs (i.e., during circle phases). These results suggest that the honeybee dance facilitates the olfactory information transfer between incoming foragers and hive mates, and we propose that excitatory displays in other social insect species serve the same purpose. While recent empirical and theoretical findings suggested that the colony level foraging benefits of the spatial information encoded in the waggle dance vary seasonally and with habitats, the role of the dance as a compound signal not only indicating the presence of a profitable resource but also amplifying the information transfer regarding floral odors may be important under any ecological circumstances. © 2007 Springer-Verlag. 2007 https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz
institution Universidad de Buenos Aires
institution_str I-28
repository_str R-134
collection Biblioteca Digital - Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (UBA)
topic Apis mellifera
Floral scent
Information transfer
Trophallaxis
Waggle dance
bee
environmental cue
foraging behavior
olfaction
population distribution
social insect
spatial analysis
theoretical study
Apis mellifera
Apoidea
Hexapoda
spellingShingle Apis mellifera
Floral scent
Information transfer
Trophallaxis
Waggle dance
bee
environmental cue
foraging behavior
olfaction
population distribution
social insect
spatial analysis
theoretical study
Apis mellifera
Apoidea
Hexapoda
Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
topic_facet Apis mellifera
Floral scent
Information transfer
Trophallaxis
Waggle dance
bee
environmental cue
foraging behavior
olfaction
population distribution
social insect
spatial analysis
theoretical study
Apis mellifera
Apoidea
Hexapoda
description Floral scents are important information cues used to organize foraging-related tasks in honeybees. The waggle dance, apart from encoding spatial information about food sources, might facilitate the transfer of olfactory information by increasing the dissipation of volatiles brought back by successful foragers. By assuming that food scents are more intensive on specific body parts of returning foragers, i.e., the posterior legs of pollen foragers and mouthparts of nectar foragers, we quantified the interactions between hive mates and foragers during dances advertising different types of food sources. For natural sources, a higher proportion of hive mates contacted the hind legs of pollen dancers (where the pollen loads were located) with their heads compared to non-pollen dancers. On the other hand, the proportion of head-to-head contacts was higher for non-pollen foragers during the waggle runs. When the food scent was manipulated, dancers collecting scented sugar solution had a higher proportion of head-to-head contacts and a lower proportion around their hind legs compared to dancers collecting unscented solution. The presence of food odors did not affect in-hive behaviors of dancers, but it increased the number of trophallaxes in-between waggle runs (i.e., during circle phases). These results suggest that the honeybee dance facilitates the olfactory information transfer between incoming foragers and hive mates, and we propose that excitatory displays in other social insect species serve the same purpose. While recent empirical and theoretical findings suggested that the colony level foraging benefits of the spatial information encoded in the waggle dance vary seasonally and with habitats, the role of the dance as a compound signal not only indicating the presence of a profitable resource but also amplifying the information transfer regarding floral odors may be important under any ecological circumstances. © 2007 Springer-Verlag.
title Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
title_short Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
title_full Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
title_fullStr Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
title_full_unstemmed Floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
title_sort floral scents affect the distribution of hive bees around dancers
publishDate 2007
url https://bibliotecadigital.exactas.uba.ar/collection/paper/document/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_03405443_v61_n10_p1589_Diaz
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