Ruth Rosin said:

> From my point of view however trying to explain how this presumed
> "dance language" evolved is highly premature, because there has
> never been any convincing evidence for its very existence.

There is a base of research both wide and deep linking dances to specific
actions of recruited bees.  If you don't find these many publications to
be "convincing", then you should critique the specific papers themselves
on a point-by-point basis, and engage the authors in direct dialog.

> ODea's publication includes a reference to an article that
> claims that recruitment by dancing foragers does not exist
> in the Africanized honeybees.

While it is true that A. m. scutellata are generally less inclined
to attempt to recruit other bees to their finds, they clearly do dance.

Of the 6 known species of honey bee, all of them use dance language
as their primary means of recruiting nest mates to resources.

There ARE variations in use of dance, the most striking being the maximum
distance described by a "round dance".  A. floreata, A. dorsata and
A. cerana use the round dance for distances less than 50 meters while
Apis mellifera ligustica uses it for distances up to 200 meters and
Apis mellifera cornica for resources up to 1000 meters distant.

> Evolutionary considerations alone should also lead one to adopt a
> very healthy measure of skepticism towards any claim that honeybees
> constitute a flagrant exception among all living organisms, as the
> only animals capable of using a language of symbols at a qualitative
> level of complexity not know anywhere else except among humans.

I think it would be much more accurate to say that we have been able
to get a dim glimpse of how communication works with bees, and have
not with other animals.  Clearly, all animals communicate one way or
another.  The fact that we do not have easy ways to analyze their
communication does not imply that their communications are "less
complex" or "less symbolic" than those of bees.

And, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, bees appear to be even capable of
abstract reasoning, a feat far more complex than mere symbolic language.

http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308D&L=bee-l&D=0&F=P&H=0&O=T&T
=1&P=360&F=


                jim

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