>     I have no particular investment in the Dance Theory.  It is a nice
>     picture, but what matters is "is it true"?
>
>     The tenor of the writings I've seen seems to be to prove or
>     demonstrate the validity of a strongly held belief.  That is
>     proponents of the theory design experiments to prove their belief and
>     explain away the arguments of the opponents.  At the same time the
>     anti Dance Theory people seem to design their experiments to disprove
>     the theory.  Is there no work being done by people who not only claim
>     objectivity, but demonstrate it.  It seems to me that the search for
>     truth is not served by two opposing sides, but by seeking what is
>     true, whether we believe it or not.
 
We actually went through a big foofaraw on this back in August, but maybe
not everyone was around for it then - at the time I suggested (and I have
no particular investment, either) that there is a biogical interpretation
that can easily be taken as a compromise position, and is actually in
keeping with much of our understanding of orientation behavior in general,
and in bees and wasps in particular. That is, their orientation flights
generally consist of specific "phases", most conveniently divided up into
"long-range" versus "short-range" modalities. This is true throughout the
nesting hymenoptera; it is not a particularly great leap to suppose that
the dance conveys information only relevant to long-range modalities, while
the odor cues are utilized in the short-range searches once a bee has flown
to a certain position in mid-air. Adrian himself mentioned that bees will
fly in a zig-zag path away from the hive, which is certainly a plausible
parallel to the "waggle" component of the dance (and I'm sure no one can
disagree with the observations that the dance IS oriented relative to the
sun's position, and adjusted as it moves). On the other hand, it isn't
implausible that the dance may *contain* more information than the scouts
are able to exploit, or respond to accurately. The point is, if bees can
use the dance to get into the general vicinity of a resource, but then need
an odor cue to be enticed to *land* there, then both parties in the
"controversy" could each claim their share of the "truth".
        Too bad one can't rent the Superdome (or maybe one of those domes
that has a removable cover) for a week or so to run some large-scale
experiments under nice, controlled conditions, and using some of those
nifty passive radar transponders that just appeared in Nature...it might
help resolve some things.
Sincerely,
 
Doug Yanega       Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA      phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949
 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82