Vibrating the food receivers: a direct way of signal transmission in stingless bees (Melipona seminigra)

Abstract

An element common to the recruitment communication of eusocial bees (honey bees, stingless bees and bumble bees) are pulsed thorax vibrations generated by successful foragers within the nest. In stingless bees, foragers vibrate during the unloading of the collected food. In the present study on Melipona seminigra we demonstrate that during trophallactic contacts, the food receivers are directly vibrated by the foragers. As a consequence, both the temporal structure and the main frequency component of the forager’s vibrations are directly passed on to the receiver. The vibrations are attenuated by about 17 dB on their way from the forager’s thorax (velocity amplitude of the vibrations: ∼70 mm/s) to the receiver’s thorax (∼10 mm/s), the main amount of attenuation (about 12 dB) occurring during transmission from the head of the forager to that of the receiver. Vibrations conducted through the substrate between the forager and food receiver are comparatively small with velocity amplitudes of 0.3 mm/s. Possible ways of perception and the advantages of vibration transmission by direct contact within the recruitment context are discussed.