Bees prioritize their unique waggle dance to find flowers

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

by Royal Holloway, University of London

Researchers at Royal Holloway have developed a method to track bee-to-bee communication in honeybee hives, showing how bees have many means to learn from their nest mates about the best flowers to visit, but it is their unique waggle dance which is prioritised above all else to find the best food sites.

Beehives are information centres, where many individuals wait in the hive for others to bring information back about rich flower patches. It has long been known that this information can be conveyed through waggle dances that encode the distance and compass direction that other bees should follow and how bees' impressive sense of smell can often lead them to flower patches without following a single dance.

However, in the new study, led by postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Matthew Hasenjager from the Department of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, the researchers traced the simultaneous spread of both dance-based and food-odour information as it travelled through the hive.

They showed that bees ignored the scents and overwhelmingly responded to the dances when looking for new flower patches.

Conversely, when temporarily inactive foragers are motivated to return to familiar foraging sites, dances played a secondary role to olfactory (sense of smell and taste) information gained through antennal interaction and by swapping food with colony mates.

Dr. Hasenjager, said: "We've known for a long time that bees can use the waggle dance to find new foraging sites, but the extent to which they actually do so is less well understood. Several recent studies have shown that colonies without this information often perform just fine.

"So to understand when the dance actually matters to the bees themselves, we developed a means to tease apart the effects of following dances from other ways bees can share information about food.

"We found that bees searching for new foraging locations relied overwhelmingly on dance-based information, whereas decisions to revisit known locations were instead guided mostly by olfactory communication."

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Mysterious river dolphin helps crack the code of marine mammal communication

Date:  April 19, 2019

Source:  University of Vermont

The Araguaian river dolphin of Brazil is something of a mystery. It was thought to be quite solitary, with little social structure that would require communication. But Laura May Collado, a biologist at the University of Vermont, and her colleagues have discovered that the dolphins can actually make hundreds of different sounds to communicate, a finding that could help uncover how communication evolved in marine mammals.

"We found that they do interact socially and are making more sounds than previously thought," she says. "Their vocal repertoire is very diverse."

The findings of May Collado are her colleagues were published in the journal PeerJ on April 18.

The Araguaian dolphins, also called botos, are a difficult animal to study. They are hard to find in the first place, and while the waters of the Araguaia and Tocatins rivers are clear, it is challenging to identify individuals because the dolphins are skittish and hard to approach.

Luckily, Gabriel Melo-Santos, a biologist from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and leader of the project, found a fish market in the Brazilian town of Mocajuba where the botos regularly visit to be fed by people shopping there. The clear water and regular dolphin visits provided a unique opportunity to get a close look at how the animals behave and interact, and to identify and keep track of various individuals.

The team used underwater cameras and microphones to record sounds and interactions between the dolphins at the market, and took some genetic samples. They identified 237 different types of sounds the dolphins make, but even with 20 hours of recordings the researchers don't believe they captured the animals' entire acoustic repertoire. The most common sounds were short, two-part calls that baby dolphins made when they were approaching their mothers.

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Humans identify emotions in the voices of all air-breathing vertebrates

Joint press release by Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Date: July 26, 2017

Source: Ruhr-University Bochum

Summary: Amphibians, reptiles, mammals -- all of them communicate via acoustic signals. And humans are able to assess the emotional value of these signals. The authors interpreted their findings as evidence that there might be a universal code for the vocal expression and perception of emotions in the animal kingdom.

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Fish found to communicate with one another using urine

February 2, 2017 by Bob Yirka

 (Phys.org)—A trio of researchers with the University of Bern in Switzerland has found that at least one species of fish communicates with others of its kind using chemicals in its urine. In their paper published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, the team outlines experiments they conducted with a cichlid fish and what they discovered. 

Prior research has shown that some species of animals use urine as a means to communicate with one another. In this new effort, the researchers sought to learn if fish might also do so, because it seemed logical—they are not able to speak and could easily transmit chemicals through water via urine.

To find out, they inserted a partition in the middle of a fish tank that prevented fish on either side from interacting physically with one another. In some scenarios, the barrier had tiny holes to allow water to pass between the sides, while in others it did not. Also, some barriers were opaque and others were transparent. In addition, the researchers injected the fish with a blue dye that allowed them to see and measure urine being expelled by the fish once in the tank.

The researchers measured how much urine was expelled under a variety of situations—in which only one fish was in the tank; in which there were two but they could not see each other; in which there were two and they could see each other but were or were not able to communicate via urine through the barrier—the team also used a variety of fish sizes and noted fish behavior throughout each test.

The researchers looked at their results and noted that when two fish saw one another in the tank, they raised their fins and approached each other in an aggressive manner, and both emitted more urine than when they were not able to see another fish. Also, they found that only when the urine was allowed to move through the barrier was there a noticeable change in behavior of the fish—in such cases, the smaller fish generally reduced its aggressiveness, yielding to the larger one. Interestingly, the researchers also noted that when the urine was not able to pass through the barrier and the fish were able to see one another, both emitted more urine than in any other scenario, apparently aware that their message was not getting through.

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Ants communicate by mouth-to-mouth fluid exchange

Date: November 29, 2016

Source: eLife

Liquids shared mouth-to-mouth by social insects contain proteins and small molecules that can influence the development and organisation of their colonies, according to new findings published in eLife.

The study from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, suggests Florida carpenter ants can collectively influence their communities by shifting the cocktail of proteins, hormones and other small molecules that they pass mouth-to-mouth to one another and their young through a process called trophallaxis.

"Food is passed to every adult and developing ant by trophallaxis. This creates a network of interactions linking every member of the colony," says senior author Laurent Keller, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution.

"A lot of researchers consider trophallaxis only as a means of food-sharing," adds Professor Richard Benton of the Center for Integrative Genomics, also a senior author of the study. "But trophallaxis occurs in other contexts, such as when an ant is reunited with a nest-mate after isolation. We therefore wanted to see if the fluid exchanged by trophallaxis contains molecules that allow ants to pass other chemical messages to each other, and not just food."

To answer this question, the team, led by first author and postdoctoral researcher Dr Adria LeBoeuf, analysed fluid from pairs of ants engaged in trophallaxis. Surprisingly, they identified a large number of proteins that appear to be involved in regulating the growth of ants, along with high levels of juvenile hormone, an important regulator of insect development, reproduction, and behaviour.



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Scientists search for regional accents in cod

Date: October 6, 2016

Source: University of Exeter

Fish may have regional accents and communicate differently in different parts of the world, according to fish expert Steve Simpson, Associate Professor of Marine Biology and global change.

Professor Simpson, who has listened to the vocalisations of fish using sophisticated underwater listening equipment, has identified variations in the "voices" of cod from America and Europe.

Different 'dialects' have been found in many animals, from songbirds to sperm whales. Simpson is now exploring whether vocal fish, including cod and haddock, living in different areas around Britain could have localised accents because they gather in the same spawning grounds generation after generation.

Prof. Simpson's research into bioacoustics and the "soundscape" of Britain's seas has so far focused on the impact of maritime noise pollution on fish. His group has shown that fish become stressed by noise, make bad decisions when feeding and faced with predators, and that early development is impacted by noisy conditions. He fears noise pollution from maritime construction, speed boats and ships could affect their ability to attract mates, where their vocal behaviour is key to reproductive success.

"Seawater is hundreds of times denser than air, so underwater sounds travel much faster and further. We have found that fish on coral reefs are susceptible to noise pollution, but we are yet to study the effects in our own waters, which are some of the busiest shipping areas in the world.

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Pigs communicate ‘personality’ through grunts, study finds

JUNE 30, 2016

by Chuck Bednar

While they may not exactly be speaking Pig Latin, new research indicates that members of the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates can reveal important information about their personalities and their overall welfare through the grunts they use to communicate.

Published in the latest edition of the journal Royal Society Open Science, the new study was led by researchers at the University of Lincoln and Queens University Belfast, and also found a link between the rate of a pig’s vocalizations and the quality of its living conditions.

As lead author Mary Friel, a PhD student at Queen's University Belfast, explained Wednesday in a statement, “The aim of this research was to investigate what factors affect vocalizations in pigs so that we can better understand what information they convey.”

“Understanding how the vocalizations of pigs' relate to their personality will also help animal behaviorists and welfare experts have a clearer picture of the impact those personalities have on communication, and thus its role in the evolution of social behavior and group dynamics in social species,” she added.

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Ship noise stops Orca whales from talking to each other

Underwater sound pollution disrupts the communication methods of killer whales and could harm their ability to locate salmon

7:05PM GMT 02 Feb 2016

Noise from ships interferes with the ability of endangered killer whales to 'talk' to each other and hunt, suggests a new study.

Researchers found underwater sound pollution in coastal habitats disrupts the orca's communication methods and ability to locate scarce salmon.

Scientists set out to discover if noise from a nearby shipping lane interferes with the orca's ability to send out clicks and listen for their echoes in the ocean off Seattle while hunting salmon.

The researchers measured underwater noise as ships passed their study site 3,000 times.

Research has shown that the growth in commercial shipping has raised the intensity of low-frequency noise in the ocean almost 10-fold since the 1960s.

Because the noise occurs at the low frequencies used by baleen whales there is growing evidence it may impact their ability to communicate, and therefore their survival.

But the team behind the new research wanted to know if ship noise could extend to the higher frequencies used by toothed whales and therefore pose similar threats to them.

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Frogs 'Talk' Using Complex Signals

by Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | January 13, 2016 02:05pm ET

Frogs are known for producing a wide range of sounds, and they certainly aren't shy about piping up to win mates or warn intruders off their territory. But some types of frogs have a broader "vocabulary" than others, combining different vocalizations with gestures to say, "Come hither!" or "Keep your distance!"

A recent study of a Brazilian torrent frog, Hylodes japi, shows that this species employs a more nuanced communication system than any other known frog species. These outgoing amphibians use a combination of tactile, vocal and visual signals — including squealing, head bobbing and alternate-arm waving — to get each others' attention, the scientists said.

In fact, researchers found that the tiny H. japi had a sizable repertoire of calls and displays that was more complex than any seen before in anurans, the animal order that includes frogs and toads. The species' "vocabulary" included five visual displays never seen before in anurans at all.

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