Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) mob wasps away from the nest by directed visual patterns.

ABSTRACT: The open nesting behaviour of giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) accounts for the evolution of a series of defence strategies to protect the colonies from predation. In particular, the concerted action of shimmering behaviour is known to effectively confuse and repel predators. In shimmering, bees on the nest surface flip their abdomens in a highly coordinated manner to generate Mexican wave-like patterns. The paper documents a further-going capacity of this kind of collective defence: the visual patterns of shimmering waves align regarding their directional characteristics with the projected flight manoeuvres of the wasps when preying in front of the bees' nest. The honeybees take here advantage of a threefold asymmetry intrinsic to the prey-predator interaction: (a) the visual patterns of sh

SUBMITTER: Kastberger G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4209238 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature