Hi,
The Nature (2005) radar-tracking study by Riley et al. has already created considerable excitement in the popular scientific news-media. The study, nonetheless, never did, nor could, salvage the DL hypothesis, because the whole study is simply totally irrelevant to the DL controversy. You would not, however, discern that much by simply reading the published report; which is (accidentally, or not), simply misleading.
According to the report only 2 bees, ( out of the 19 radar-tracked bees
released near the hive, for which flight-tracks are provided) "landed
at the feeder". In response to questions about various details
concerning the study, Uwe Greggers (the scientist who actually designed
the study, however, informed me, among others, (in e-mail exchanges)),
that those 2 bees did not actually land at the feeder. Instead, they
only landed on the stand on which the feeder stood, but never found
either the food, or the feeder (even when they were not more than 8 cm.
away from the feeder). Anyone who questions that is free to personally
check with him.
What this simply means is that none of the bees radar-tracked in the
study ever found any food in the field during that study. The honeybee
DL hypothesis was, however, intended specifically to deal with the
problem of how honeybee recruits find their foragers'-feeder, as well as
other sources with the same major odor, in the field. It is in
principle utterly impossible to even begin to address that problem by
studying only bees that never found any food.
Staunch DL supporters have throughout the years totally unnecessarily
managed to make the DL controversy so complex and convoluted, to the
point of occasionally completely loosing sight of what the controversy
is really about. In terms of the DL controversy, you can afford to
completely ignore that whole study.
If anyone is not convinced yet, let me note just one more point (out of very many) against the DL hypothesis: The authors claim that their radar-tracked bees were unquestionably regular recruits, that showed they used DL information after attending a dance in the hive. And the way those bees used that information is indeed expected to lead to a very low efficiency. However, what started for DL supporters as an anomaly of very low efficiency, had long ago blossomed into a far more dangerous anomaly. A careful analysis of the study published in Science by Gould (1975) sufficed to show (see my publication of 1978 in Journal of theoretical biology), that the efficiency of presumed users of DL information was not simply very low. It was even lower (in terms of the average number of dances performed per successful recruit) than the efficiency of users of odor alone all along. A DL whose use is less efficient than use of odor alone all along, (which insects in general have, and must have had since long before honeybees evolved),could never evolve in the first place.
Staunch DL supporters simply do not read what DL opponents have managed to publish(in spite of very tough opposition), carefully enough, if they bother to read it at all.
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")
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