Foraging in honeybees - when does it pay to dance?
Foraging in honeybees - when does it pay to dance?
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DOI：
10.1093/beheco/arm117
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发表时间：
2008-03-01
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Bin Lew, Jie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Beekman, Madeleine;Bin Lew, Jie
蜜蜂的独特之处在于，它们是已知的唯一使用摇摆舞招募巢友的社会昆虫。这种摇摆舞被成功的觅食者用来传达关于食物来源的方向和距离的信息。巢友可以利用这种空间信息，增加他们找到食物来源的机会。但是蜜蜂的舞蹈交流有多有效呢？先前的研究表明，在所有觅食条件下，跳舞并不能使蜂群受益，而且跳舞的好处很小。我们使用了一个基于个体的模拟模型来研究在哪些觅食条件下它会跳舞。我们比较了3种类型的蜂群的净花蜜摄入量：1）使用舞蹈交流的蜂群; 2）跳舞但不能使用舞蹈的空间信息的蜂群; 3）不跳舞的蜂群。我们的研究结果表明，当独立发现食物来源的概率较低时，跳舞是有益的。当补丁非常小或非常远时，独立发现率较低。在这种情况下，跳舞是有益的，因为只有一个人需要找到一个补丁，整个群体受益。然而，蜜蜂的舞蹈交流的主要好处似乎是，它使殖民地能够只在最有利可图的地方觅食，而忽略了低质量的觅食地。因此，舞蹈允许殖民地迅速利用高质量的斑块，从而防止种内和种间竞争者使用同一斑块。
Honeybees are unique in that they are the only social insects that are known to recruit nest mates using the waggle dance. This waggle dance is used by successful foragers to convey information about both the direction and distance to food sources. Nest mates can use this spatial information, increasing their chances of locating the food source. But how effective is the bees' dance communication? Previous work has shown that dancing does not benefit a honeybee colony under all foraging conditions and that the benefits of dancing are small. We used an individual-based simulation model to investigate under which foraging conditions it pays to dance. We compared the net nectar intake of 3 types of colonies: 1) colonies that use dance communication; 2) colonies that did dance but could not use the dance's spatial information; and 3) colonies that did not dance. Our results show that dancing is beneficial when the probability of independent discovery of food sources is low. Low independent discovery rates occur when patches are very small or very far away. Under these conditions, dancing is beneficial as only a single individual needs to find a patch for the whole colony to benefit. The main benefit of the honeybee's dance communication, however, seems to be that it enables the colony to forage at the most profitable patches only, ignoring forage patches that are of low quality. Thus, dancing allows the colony to rapidly exploit high-quality patches, thereby preventing both intra- and interspecific competitors from using that same patch.