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Error in the honeybee waggle dance improves foraging flexibility.

ABSTRACT: The honeybee waggle dance communicates the location of profitable food sources, usually with a certain degree of error in the directional information ranging from 10-15° at the lower margin. We simulated one-day colonial foraging to address the biological significance of information error in the waggle dance. When the error was 30° or larger, the waggle dance was not beneficial. If the error was 15°, the waggle dance was beneficial when the food sources were scarce. When the error was 10° or smaller, the waggle dance was beneficial under all the conditions tested. Our simulation also showed that precise information (0-5° error) yielded great success in finding feeders, but also caused failures at finding new feeders, i.e., a high-risk high-return strategy. The observation that actual bees perform the waggle dance with an error of 10-15° might reflect, at least in part, the maintenance of a successful yet risky foraging trade-off.

SUBMITTER: Okada R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3935192 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Error in the honeybee waggle dance improves foraging flexibility.

Okada Ryuichi R Ikeno Hidetoshi H Kimura Toshifumi T Ohashi Mizue M Aonuma Hitoshi H Ito Etsuro E

Scientific reports 20140226

The honeybee waggle dance communicates the location of profitable food sources, usually with a certain degree of error in the directional information ranging from 10-15° at the lower margin. We simulated one-day colonial foraging to address the biological significance of information error in the waggle dance. When the error was 30° or larger, the waggle dance was not beneficial. If the error was 15°, the waggle dance was beneficial when the food sources were scarce. When the error was 10° or sma ...[more]

PMID: 24569525

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