Similarities in the behaviour of dance followers among honey bee species suggest a conserved mechanism of dance communication

Abstract Group living organisms rely on intra-group communication to adjust individual and collective behavioural decisions. Complex communication systems are predominantly multimodal and combine modulatory and information bearing signals. The honey bee waggle dance, one of the most elaborate forms of communication in invertebrates, stimulates nestmates to search for food and communicates symbolic information about the location of the food source. Previous studies on the dance behaviour in diverse honey bee species demonstrated distinct differences in the combination of visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile signals produced by the dancer. We now studied the behaviour of the receivers of the dance signals, the dance followers, to explore the significance of the different signals in the communication process. In particular, we ask whether there are differences in the behaviour of dance followers between the 3 major Asian honey bee species, A. florea, A. dorsata and A. cerana , and whether these might correlate with the differences in the signals produced by the dancing foragers. Our comparison demonstrates that the behaviour of the dance followers is highly conserved across all 3 species despite the differences in the dance signals. The highest number of followers was present lateral to the dancer throughout the waggle run, and the mean body orientation of the dance followers with respect to the waggle dancer was close to 90° throughout the run for all 3 species. These findings suggest that dance communication might be more conserved than implied by the differences in the signals produced by the dancer. Along with studies in A. mellifera , our results indicate that all honey bee species rely on tactile contacts between the dancer and follower to communicate spatial information. The cues and signals that differ between the species may be involved in attracting the followers towards the dancer in the different nest environments.