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The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective

The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Menzel, Randolf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6955924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31775270
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10120424
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author Menzel, Randolf
author_facet Menzel, Randolf
author_sort Menzel, Randolf
collection PubMed
description The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the waggle run relative to the sun azimuth or to gravity, as well as the number of waggles per run, have been tentatively related to peculiar behavioral patterns in both solitary and social insect species and are thought to reflect phylogenetic pre-adaptations. Here, I ask whether these thoughts can be substantiated from a functional perspective. Communication in the waggle dance is a group phenomenon involving the dancer and the followers that perform partially overlapping movements encoding and decoding the message respectively. It is thus assumed that the dancer and follower perform close cognitive processes. This provides us with access to these cognitive processes during dance communication because the follower can be tested in its flight performance when it becomes a recruit. I argue that the dance message and the landscape experience are processed in the same navigational memory, allowing the bee to fly novel direct routes, a property understood as an indication of a cognitive map.
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spelling pubmed-69559242020-01-23 The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective Menzel, Randolf Insects Review The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the waggle run relative to the sun azimuth or to gravity, as well as the number of waggles per run, have been tentatively related to peculiar behavioral patterns in both solitary and social insect species and are thought to reflect phylogenetic pre-adaptations. Here, I ask whether these thoughts can be substantiated from a functional perspective. Communication in the waggle dance is a group phenomenon involving the dancer and the followers that perform partially overlapping movements encoding and decoding the message respectively. It is thus assumed that the dancer and follower perform close cognitive processes. This provides us with access to these cognitive processes during dance communication because the follower can be tested in its flight performance when it becomes a recruit. I argue that the dance message and the landscape experience are processed in the same navigational memory, allowing the bee to fly novel direct routes, a property understood as an indication of a cognitive map. MDPI 2019-11-25 /pmc/articles/PMC6955924/ /pubmed/31775270 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10120424 Text en © 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Menzel, Randolf
The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title_full The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title_fullStr The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title_full_unstemmed The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title_short The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective
title_sort waggle dance as an intended flight: a cognitive perspective
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6955924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31775270
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10120424
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