Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
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Nectar Weight (g)
Figure 2.12.
Scatterplot of pollen and nectar loads from 369 returning foragers.
which the receiver bees unload the foragers. h e probability of per-
forming a dance and the duration of the dances bees perform correlate
with the concentration of the sugar solution they collect. Tom Seeley
has shown how the simple processes of individual assessment of food
quality and unloading time provide information about the nutritional
status of a colony and a mechanism for dif erential recruitment of bees
to forage for the more proi table resources. h e probability, vigor, and
duration of waggle dances correlate with the concentration of sugar
solution collected. Seeley trained individual foragers to a feeder where
he varied the concentration of sugar solution of ered. He then ob-
served and recorded the number of waggle runs they produced with
their recruitment dances. He found a continuous linear relationship
between sugar concentration and waggle runs, a suprathreshold, ana-
log response. He also found that each bee he tested had a dif erent re-
lationship between concentration and waggle runs; this suggests that
the sucrose-response relationships were dif erent for each of the seven
bees of the study.
