Previous authors have suggested that error in the dance language of Apis mellifera is adaptive. That is, it has been tuned by natural selection to spread out the searching by reruits so that they discover novel food sources rather than searching precisely on locations already exploited. This study suggests that there may be no adaptive benefit to the error. If bees use visual cues for orientation while performing dances, there is significantly less error than in dances performed while using gravity for orientation. This result suggests that bees are performing dances as accurately as physiological mechanisms allow, and that the error in the dance language is perhaps due to a mechanistic constraint. When bees perform dances for resources that have different amounts of optimal scatter, the data show that there is no significant difference in the amount of error between dances. The "Tuned-Error Hypothesis” predicts that error in the dance language has become tuned to an optimum level for each resource; these data suggest that the error in the dance has not become tuned to an optimal amount, and that there is probably no mechanism for regulating the amount of error.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)
Keywords: communication, dance language
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