Matina Donaldson-Matasci (University of Arizona)
Abstract. Collective foragers like honey bees and ants often communicate with one another about the location of food resources. What is the value of the information they transmit—to the individual that collected it, to the individual that receives it, and to the colony as a whole? How does the value of communication depend on the environment, particularly the distribution of food resources? I will present the results from a series of experiments with honey bees, looking at the benefits of their remarkable “dance language” across a variety of habitats. I show how colony-level benefits of communication depend on characteristics of the floral environment, and how this relates to the benefits that individuals may gain from information about floral resources.