Why do honey bees have dialects? |
| |
Authors: | James L Gould |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Biology, Princeton University, 08544 Princeton, New Jersey, USA |
| |
Abstract: | Summary The indication of distance in the honey bee dance-the number of meters signified by each waggle-varies by more than a factor of ten among geographic races. Experiments in which artificial swarms were offered a choice of nest boxes indicate that A. m. carnica, the long-distance German race, clearly prefers larger and more distant cavities than the intermediate-dialect Italian race, ligustica. From these results on preferred dispersal distance and cavity size, combined with a general trend among the many races of honey bee toward dialects adapted for indicating longer distances occurring in colder latitudes, I propose that the dialect is probably an adaptation to each race's typical foraging range. That range is in large part a necessary consequence of population size, which in turn is determined by the thermal load imposed on clusters by winters in different climates. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|