On June 1st, James Fischer responded to my posting of the same day. I
will only comment on a few of his points.
He wrote:
>As for "voting", scientists "vote" all the time, at least on methodology.
>Some >call it "peer review".
Yes, but favorable peer review (anonymous) is highly skewed to support
those who hold similar views to the ones doing the reviewing. That is only
human nature! (And often ends up with suppression of scientific progress.)
Fischer wrote:
>If you say that "waggle dances" with durations of less than a second
>exist, I'll openly admit to never noticing them. But let's accept that a
>waggle dance IS done for distances that close as a "given", and continue...
>
>As to "accuracy", if one were to agree with Seeley's statement that each
>100 >meters of distance is represented by roughly 75 milliseconds (0.075
>seconds) of >waggle, I think anyone could understand how hard it would be
>to accurately >measure the length of a waggle dance when the food source
>is only 1000 meters >away.
>
> 0.075 / 100 * 1000 = 0.75 seconds
Seeley seems to be in error, if that reflects his statement. On the website:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm,
Item #4 has a figure on the bottom of page 121 of the publication included
therein, one that shows the time spent on the waggle run compared to the
distance of a food source, with some examples of sound displays in the
figure above that one.
Let me provide some background.
Back in the 1950s, portable tape recorders had just been invented, as
well as sound spectrograph equipment that could display sounds in visual
displays. My background in electronics, physics, and mathematics permitted
me to use that equipment to tape record sounds of bees in their hives. My
background in commercial beekeeping let me essentially "go into" a dark
hive and record those sounds. All of that combined is why I was apparently
the first one to hear and record the sounds of dancing bees (as initially
published in 1959).
Whereas a stopwatch will not provide accuracy, a tape recording and
analysis of the sounds can --- as shown in those figures. The figures in
that publication, though, are somewhat deceptive, in that they do not
display the error, an error that can be obtained by recording dance sounds
of several bees that have travelled at each distance. For the original
results one can read the following paper:
1962 Wenner, A.M. Sound production during the waggle dance of the honey
bee. Animal Behaviour. 10:79-95.
Fig 1 therein shows the original results for waggle run time at each
distance; Fig. 5b shows the error in waggle run sounds at various
distances.
In those figures one can see that the waggle run time for 1,000 yards
(meters) is just over 1.6 seconds, not the 0.75 second Fischer credited to
Seeley.
Of course, one will not find bee language advocates referring to the
results from our publications.
Fischer asked:
>(What's a bee's reaction time? Faster than a human's, but what?)
No, we don't know answers to those questions.
And wrote:
>I don't really think it matters if the error is on the part of the bees or
>the >grad students doing the measuring.
I have been personally involved with all of the results that I have
published, having learned in graduate school (while watching other graduate
students) that hired assistants can take shortcuts and can also "obtain"
results that a major professor wants.
**********
All that said, here is another very simple experiment that I cannot get
bee language advocates to repeat:
Have 10 marked foragers collect scented sucrose solution at a feeding
station and continually kill all unmarked bees as they arrive --- by
putting them in a jar of alcohol (with a lid) as they arrive.
During each 15 minute period during a 3 hour period, keep a tally of the
number of arrivals and replace dish and pad with clean ones each such
period.
On the next day, repeat the same experiment but cut the amount of scent
by one-half.
On the following day, do it all over but cut the scent by one-half again.
On the following day, do the same.
On the following day, do the same.
etc.
To see the sort of results that will emerge, one need only go to the
following publication:
1971 Wells, P.H. and A.M. Wenner. The influence of food scent on behavior
of foraging honey bees. Physiolgical Zoology. 44:191-209.
As an example of what results one can obtain with careful attention to
keeping everything very clean and eventually nearly odor-free, I quote here
from our 1969 paper in the journal SCIENCE:
"On 25 July 1968 ... in the absence of a major nectar source for the
colony, we received only 5 recruits from a hive of approximately 60,000
bees after ten bees had foraged at each of four stations for a total of
1374 round trips during a 3-hour period."
Will you find any of those results mentioned in publications by bee
language proponents? No. But you can find them in our 1990 Columbia
University Press book, ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY.
The results shown in Table 10.1 in that book reveal very clearly the
overwhelming importance of odor in recruitment success, as well as the
failure of Nasanov gland exposure to attract recruits.
Is it any wonder that I took a "leave of absence" from bee research at
that time and spent two productive decades in marine biology studies?
And what could I have accomplished in bee research during that time if
the peer review system would have permitted me to continue such research?
(See next to last item on the website --- LORD OF THE GADFLIES).
Adrian
Adrian M. Wenner (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road (805) 893-8062 (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA 93106 [http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm]
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*
* "The history of science teaches us that each time we think
* that we have it all figured out, nature has a radical surprise
* in store for us that requires significant and sometimes drastic
* changes in how we think the world works."
*
* Brian Greene (1999:373)
*
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