Honeybee dances communicate distances measured by optic flow

Harald E. Esch (), Shaowu Zhang, Mandyan V. Srinivasan and Juergen Tautz
Additional contact information
Harald E. Esch: University of Notre Dame
Shaowu Zhang: Centre for Visual Science, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University
Mandyan V. Srinivasan: Centre for Visual Science, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University
Juergen Tautz: Biozentrum Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland

Nature, 2001, vol. 411, issue 6837, 581-583

Abstract: Abstract In honeybees, employed foragers recruit unemployed hive mates to food sources by dances from which a human observer can read the distance and direction of the food source1. When foragers collect food in a short, narrow tunnel, they dance as if the food source were much farther away. Dancers gauge distance by retinal image flow on the way to their destination. Their visually driven odometer misreads distance because the close tunnel walls increase optic flow2. We examined how hive mates interpret these dances. Here we show that recruited bees search outside in the direction of the tunnel at exaggerated distances and not inside the tunnel where the foragers come from. Thus, dances must convey information about the direction of the food source and the total amount of image motion en route to the food source, but they do not convey information about absolute distances. We also found that perceived distances on various outdoor routes from the same hive could be considerably different. Navigational errors are avoided as recruits and dancers tend to fly in the same direction. Reported racial differences in honeybee dances1 could have arisen merely from differences in the environments in which these bees flew.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35079072 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:411:y:2001:i:6837:d:10.1038_35079072

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35079072

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().