Variability in the encoding of spatial information by dancing bees
Variability in the encoding of spatial information by dancing bees
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DOI：
10.1242/jeb.013425
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发表时间：
2008-05-15
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Menzel, Randolf
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
De Marco, Rodrigo J.;Gurevitz, Juan M.;Menzel, Randolf
蜜蜂的摇摆舞是多感官融合、中央处理和符号信息传递的一个有趣的例子。它向蜜蜂和人类观察者传达了在二维坐标系中平均向量端点处相对较小区域的位置。这个向量通常是从相同或不同舞者的摇摆相位的集合中计算出来的。然而，问题仍然存在，一个小的摇摆阶段的样本能给蜜蜂提供多少信息，以及舞蹈中编码的空间信息是如何映射到追随者在田野中的搜索的。当然，这是舞者表演的可变性，最初定义了追随者必须应对的不确定性水平，如果他们成功地破译了舞蹈中的信息。了解舞者的行为如何映射到其追随者的行为，最初依赖于对舞者在舞蹈中编码空间信息的准确性和精确性的分析。在这里，我们描述了编码到目标的距离和方向的个体内部变化。我们展示了舞者摇摆动作次数的变化，这是一种与目标距离密切相关的测量，不依赖于舞者移动的距离，这意味着在平均值周围有一个恒定的摇摆动作方差。我们还表明，摆动阶段的持续时间和连续摆动阶段的角色散和散度随舞者在空间中的方向而变化。最后，利用高速视频技术记录的舞蹈数据，我们首次分析了越来越多的摆动相位向人类观察者传达空间信息的准确性和精度。
A honeybee's waggle dance is an intriguing example of multisensory convergence, central processing and symbolic information transfer. It conveys to bees and human observers the position of a relatively small area at the endpoint of an average vector in a two-dimensional system of coordinates. This vector is often computed from a collection of waggle phases from the same or different dancers. The question remains, however, of how informative a small sample of waggle phases can be to the bees, and how the spatial information encoded in the dance is actually mapped to the followers' searches in the field. Certainly, it is the variability of a dancer's performance that initially defines the level of uncertainty that followers must cope with if they were to successfully decode information in the dance. Understanding how a dancer's behaviour is mapped to that of its followers initially relies on the analysis of both the accuracy and precision with which the dancer encodes spatial information in the dance. Here we describe within-individual variations in the encoding of the distance to and direction of a goal. We show that variations in the number of a dancer's wagging movements, a measure that correlates well with the distance to the goal, do not depend upon the dancer's travelled distance, meaning that there is a constant variance of wagging movements around the mean. We also show that the duration of the waggle phases and the angular dispersion and divergence of successive waggle phases co-vary with a dancer's orientation in space. Finally, using data from dances recorded through high-speed video techniques, we present the first analysis of the accuracy and precision with which an increasing number of waggle phases conveys spatial information to a human observer.