Speeding up social waves. Propagation mechanisms of shimmering in giant honeybees.

ABSTRACT: Shimmering is a defence behaviour in giant honeybees (Apis dorsata), whereby bees on the nest surface flip their abdomen upwards in a Mexican wave-like process. However, information spreads faster than can be ascribed to bucket bridging, which is the transfer of information from one individual to an adjacent one. We identified a saltatoric process that speeds up shimmering by the generation of daughter waves, which subsequently merge with the parental wave, producing a new wave front. Motion patterns of individual "focus" bees (n = 10,894) and their shimmering-active neighbours (n = 459,558) were measured with high-resolution video recording and stereoscopic imaging. Three types of shimmering-active surface bees were distinguished by their communication status, termed "agents": "Bucket-bri

SUBMITTER: Kastberger G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3903527 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature