Sleep deprivation impairs precision of waggle dance signaling in honey bees.

ABSTRACT: Sleep is essential for basic survival, and insufficient sleep leads to a variety of dysfunctions. In humans, one of the most profound consequences of sleep deprivation is imprecise or irrational communication, demonstrated by degradation in signaling as well as in receiving information. Communication in nonhuman animals may suffer analogous degradation of precision, perhaps with especially damaging consequences for social animals. However, society-specific consequences of sleep loss have rarely been explored, and no function of sleep has been ascribed to a truly social (eusocial) organism in the context of its society. Here we show that sleep-deprived honey bees (Apis mellifera) exhibit reduced precision when signaling direction information to food sources in their waggle dances. The deter

SUBMITTER: Klein BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3012459 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature