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Recent research
Bees mimic human brain neurones in decision making
In previous work, Thomas Seeley, Professor of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University (USA), clarified how scout bees in a honey bee swarm perform waggle dances to prompt other scout bees to inspect a promising site that has been found. In the new study, Seeley reports with five colleagues in the USA and UK, that scout bees also use inhibitory “stop signals” – a short buzz delivered with a head butt to the dancer – to inhibit the waggle dances produced by scouts advertising competing sites. The strength of the inhibition produced by each group of scouts is proportional to the group’s size. This inhibitory signalling helps ensure that only one of the sites is chosen. This is especially important for reaching a decision when two sites are equally good.
Previous research has shown that bees use stop signals to warn nest mates about such dangers as attacks at a food source. However this is the first study to show the use of stop signals in house-hunting decisions. “Such use of stop signals in decision making is analogous to how the nervous system works in complex brains”, said Seeley. “The brain has similar cross inhibitory signalling between neurones in decision-making circuits.”
Co-authors Patrick Hogan and James Marshall of the University of Sheffield (UK) explored the implications of the bees’ cross-inhibitory signalling by modelling their collective decision-making process. Analysis showed that stop signalling helps bees to break deadlocks between two equally good sites and to avoid costly dithering. The study was funded by the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station, the University of California- Riverside, and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The full report is published in Science 9 December 2011.
Professor Tom Seeley at work in the field
PHOTO © BfD
Source: Syl Kacapyr, Cornell University Press Release
