The bee's dance breaks the cultural barrier

An international team of researchers has demonstrated for the first time that Asian and European honey bees can learn to understand each other's dance language despite evolving different modes of communication. The results were published in PLoS ONE.

Nine species of honey bees discovered around the world separated from each other about 30 to 50 million years ago, and then developed different dance 'languages' . The content of the message is similar, but the exact encoding of these languages ​​differs between species.

Now researchers from Australia, China and Germany have discovered that the two most geographically isolated bees - European honey bee Apis mellifera and Asian Apis cerana - can share information and cooperate. Exploiting new food sources.

According to Dr. Shaowu Zhang, School of Biological Sciences Research, National University of Australia, explained, 'We know that members of the same honeycomb regularly exchange information through the dance to the location of new places discover, such as food sources, water sources, new nesting areas. '

Honeybee.(Photo: www.carolinabees.com )

'Reconnaissance bees carry what is called the bee's dance inside the nest. The coordinates of distant locations are encoded within the swinging period of the ballet dance, with the direction and distance of the function food indicated by the direction and length of the dance. This time period varies between bees, even if it flies at the same distance in the same environment. It is because of these distances that we think of different languages. '

This is the first group to successfully study the behavior of a honeycomb containing two different types of bees. One of the first findings of this novel experiment is that Asian and European honey bees, after a period of adjustment in the mixed team, can share information and work together to collect food. Asian honey bees follow the dance of European bees invade and decode the exact coding information.

Dr. Zhang said, 'The honey bee's dance language is one of the most well-studied information systems in the animal world. However, as we prove, surprising things still happen. This work has important applications for our understanding of animal communication. Next we plan to study exactly to what extent the difference becomes a factor between different dance languages. '