Social waves in giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) elicit nest vibrations.

ABSTRACT: Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have developed a wide array of strategies for colony defence, including the Mexican wave-like shimmering behaviour. In this collective response, the colony members perform upward flipping of their abdomens in coordinated cascades across the nest surface. The time-space properties of these emergent waves are response patterns which have become of adaptive significance for repelling enemies in the visual domain. We report for the first time that the mechanical impulse patterns provoked by these social waves and measured by laser Doppler vibrometry generate vibrations at the central comb of the nest at the basic (='natural') frequency of 2.156 ± 0.042 Hz which is more than double the average repetition rate of the driving shimmering waves. A

SUBMITTER: Kastberger G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3696463 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature