East learns from West: Asiatic honeybees can understand dance language of European honeybees

The honeybee waggle dance, through which foragers advertise the existence and location of a food source to their hive mates, is acknowledged as the only known form of symbolic communication in an invertebrate. However, the suggestion, that different species of honeybee might possess distinct 'dialects' of the waggle dance, remains controversial. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether different species of honeybee can learn from and communicate with each other. This study reports experiments using a mixed-species colony that is composed of the Asiatic bee Apis cerana cerana (Acc), and the European bee Apis mellifera ligustica (Aml). Using video recordings made at an observation hive, we first confirm that Acc and Aml have significantly different dance dialects, even when made to forage in identical environments. When reared in the same colony, these two species are able to communicate with each other: Acc foragers could decode the dances of Aml to successfully locate an indicated food source. We believe that this is the first report of successful symbolic communication between two honeybee species; our study hints at the possibility of social learning between the two honeybee species, and at the existence of a learning component in the honeybee dance language.     

An algorithm for the determination and quantification of components of nucleic acid mixtures based on single sequencing reactions

Background  

Determination and quantification of nucleic acid components in a mixture is usually accomplished by microarray approaches, where the mixtures are hybridized against specific probes. As an alternative, we propose here that a single sequencing reaction from a mixture of nucleic acids holds enough information to potentially distinguish the different components, provided it is known which components can occur in the mixture.     

Honeybees establish specific sites on the comb for their waggle dances

Successful honeybee foragers perform dances on the surface of the comb where they interact with nectar receivers and dance followers. We have recorded the sites at which dances take place in large ten-frame hives and in two-frame observation hives. We find that dancing bees are most commonly found on particular combs in large hives and in particular areas on the combs in the observation hives. Although the site where dances take place may change from day to day, dancers will keep to the same site during the foraging period in any one day. Furthermore, if an established dance site is artificially relocated in the hive during the day, dancers seek these sites out before commencing their dances. We conclude that the dance sites are labelled in some way and so promote the congregation of both dancers and dance followers at the same site. Accepted: 27 November 1996     

An episodic change of rDNA nucleotide substitution rate has occurred during the emergence of the insect order Diptera

We have studied the potential reasons for a conspicuous deviation of substitution rates in Dipteran ribosomal genes. Systematic pairwise relative-rate tests reveal that a significant increase in substitution rate is characteristic for Diptera, but not for the other insects analyzed. Estimation of sequence change in specific lineages reveals that most of these substitutions took place during the evolution of the Dipteran stem lineage. When related to the paleontologically documented periods of absolute time, the substitution rate in the stem lineage of the Diptera underwent an at least 20-fold increase compared to other insect groups and subsequently dropped by a factor of 10 before the diversification of the major Dipteran subgroups. Systematic comparisons of nucleotide composition show that this episodic change in substitution rate was accompanied by a significant increase in A+T content of Dipteran rDNA. Our data suggest that the episodic evolution of the Dipteran rDNA has most probably been caused by a change of directional mutation pressure which must have occurred during the evolution of the stem lineage of the Diptera.      

Intracommunity relationships, dispersal pattern and paternity success in a wild living community of Bonobos (Pan paniscus) determined from DNA analysis of faecal samples.

Differences in social relationships among community members are often explained by differences in genetic relationships. The current techniques of DNA analysis allow explicit testing of such a hypothesis. Here, we have analysed the genetic relationships for a community of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA markers extracted from faecal samples. Bonobos show an opportunistic and promiscuous mating behaviour, even with mates from outside the community. Nonetheless, we find that most infants were sired by resident males and that two dominant males together attained the highest paternity success. Intriguingly, the latter males are the sons of high-ranking females, suggesting an important influence of mothers on the paternity success of their sons. The molecular data support previous inferences on female dispersal and male philopatry. We find a total of five different mitochondrial haplotypes among 15 adult females, suggesting a frequent migration of females. Moreover, for most adult and subadult males in the group we find a matching mother, while this is not the case for most females, indicating that these leave the community during adolescence. Our study demonstrates that faecal samples can be a useful source for the determination of kinship in a whole community.