Print PageThe honeybee dance language, used to recruit nestmates to flowers, is thought to be adaptive because it allows the colony to collect resources more efficiently. However, researchers have shown that the dance language increases nectar collection only in certain habitats or seasons. Why? One important factor may be the way flowers are distributed around the hive. For example, if flowers are difficult to find, then communication might be important mainly because it allows many recruits to take advantage of a single scout’s find; that is, the location information that successful scouts collect is extremely valuable. Alternatively, if flowers are easy to find but highly variable in quality, then communication might be important mainly because it allows the colony to concentrate on the best resources. In this case the main value of the communication system would lie not in the location information that each dancer transmits, but rather in the collective’s ability to integrate information about relative resource quality. We manipulated the ability to communicate location information in six honeybee colonies across five different environments, and compared foraging success with and without communication. In each environment, we also measured the abundance, spatial distribution and species composition of the floral resources available.
Results/Conclusions
We found that species richness had the strongest influence on the benefits of communication: the habitats with the most species in bloom also showed the greatest improvement in foraging success. This suggests that it is the communication of resource quality, not location information per se, that is of greatest benefit to honeybee colonies. It also predicts that this type of communication should be most likely to evolve in species foraging for variable resources.
