Question map
Which of the following organisms perform waggle dance for others of their kin to indicate the direction and the distance to a source of their food?
Explanation
The correct answer is Option 3: Honeybees.
The waggle dance is a sophisticated form of communication used by honeybees (specifically Apis mellifera) to inform their hive mates about the precise location of a food source. This behavior was famously decoded by the ethologist Karl von Frisch, who earned a Nobel Prize for his research.
- Mechanism: The bee moves in a figure-eight pattern. The angle of the straight "waggle run" relative to the vertical hive wall indicates the direction of the food source in relation to the sun.
- Distance: The duration of the waggle phase correlates with the distance to the nectar or pollen; longer dances signify further locations.
While butterflies, dragonflies, and wasps exhibit complex flight patterns, they do not utilize a symbolic "dance" to communicate coordinates to their kin. Therefore, Honeybees is the only scientifically accurate choice.
PROVENANCE & STUDY PATTERN
Guest previewWhile recent research papers exist, this is effectively a 'Static Science' question disguised as current affairs. The 'Waggle Dance' is a Nobel Prize-winning discovery (Karl von Frisch, 1973) and a textbook example of animal communication. It rewards general scientific curiosity over rote textbook memorization.
This question can be broken into the following sub-statements. Tap a statement sentence to jump into its detailed analysis.
- Statement 1: Do honeybees perform a waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to a food source to other members of their colony?
- Statement 2: Do butterflies perform a waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to a food source to other members of their species?
- Statement 3: Do dragonflies perform a waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to a food source to other members of their species?
- Statement 4: Do wasps perform a waggle dance to communicate the direction and distance to a food source to other members of their colony?
- Explicitly states that bees signal both direction and distance of a food source using the waggle dance.
- Describes the behavior in the context of foraging and recruitment to hive mates.
- Explains how the waggle run encodes direction relative to the sun via the angle of the dance on the vertical comb.
- Notes that nearby followers receive this information and may be recruited to the same food source.
- States that the waggle dance is performed by a forager to communicate the location of a good food source to another forager.
- Frames the waggle dance as an example of social insect signaling conveying location information.
Says sublethal pesticide exposure may 'impact some bee's ability to forage for nectar, learn and remember where flowers are located, and possibly impair their ability to find their way home', implying bees use learned spatial information in foraging.
A student could combine this with basic knowledge that successful collective foraging in social insects often requires information transfer (e.g., about direction/distance) to ask whether bees relay spatial info via behaviors like a 'dance'.
Notes pesticides may interfere with the honeybees' 'internal radar', preventing them from gathering pollen and returning safely to the hive, indicating bees rely on internal navigation and possibly shared cues for foraging success.
One could extend this by noting that if navigation is important to hive-level food collection, mechanisms for communicating location among nestmates (such as directional signals) would be plausible to investigate.
Defines apiculture and lists reasons beekeepers keep bees (collect honey, pollination), implying organized, coordinated foraging by colonies to supply hive resources.
Combine with the fact that large colonies need efficient ways to direct many workers to food patches to hypothesize existence of a recruitment/communication behavior (e.g., waggle dance) that encodes location.
Describes colony structure with tens of thousands of worker bees, implying division of labor and the need to coordinate many workers' activities like foraging.
A student could reason that coordination among many workers would benefit from explicit signals conveying distance/direction to food sources, motivating study of possible dances or signals.
Explains that when honeybees collect nectar they also gather pollen and propolis, showing foraging is a key collective activity involving multiple resources.
This supports asking how foragers inform nestmates about profitable multi-resource locations (suggesting the need to communicate where resources are), which could lead one to check for behaviors that convey direction/distance.
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