title: Does the Earth's magnetic field serve as a reference for alignment of the honeybee Waggle dance?
abstract: The honeybee (Apis mellifera) waggle dance, which is performed inside the hive by forager bees, informs hive mates about a potent food source, and recruits them to its location. It consists of a repeated figure-8 pattern: two oppositely directed turns interspersed by a short straight segment, the "waggle run". The waggle run consists of a single stride emphasized by lateral waggling motions of the abdomen. Directional information pointing to a food source relative to the sun's azimuth is encoded in the angle between the waggle run line and a reference line, which is generally thought to be established by gravity. Yet, there is tantalizing evidence that the local (ambient) geomagnetic field (LGMF) could play a role. We tested the effect of the LGMF on the recruitment success of forager bees by placing observation hives inside large Helmholtz coils, and then either reducing the LGMF to 2% or shifting its apparent declination. Neither of these treatments reduced the number of nest mates that waggle dancing forager bees recruited to a feeding station located 200 m north of the hive. These results indicate that the LGMF does not act as the reference for the alignment of waggle-dancing bees.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Veronika
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lambinet
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Michael E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Hayden
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bieri
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: Gerhard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gries
mesh_terms: D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D009068:Movement