Adaptive Value

For bees, finding nectar is essential to survival given that is their main source of food. There exist two dances used for the communication of the location of food.

Waggle dance- This is used when food is far as to say, here is distance and direction of the food source according to the sun in the sky. This dance is done by recruiters to others in the nest (Anderson, 2000). This dance is advantageous when the food source is farther away because it uses measurements of angle in relation to sun and distance to communicate distance.

Bee Figure 5. Diagram of waggle dance (Gruter), used to recruit scouts to get nectar/food source. (Anderson, 2000)

Round dance- The round dance is used for food sources 25-100 meters away from the hive or closer. After distributing some of her new-found nectar to waiting bees the scout will begin running in a small circle, switching direction every so often.

rounddance Figure 6. Round dance(depicted here) shows how a bee would communicate to others that nectar is close, close enough to smell on dancing bee and follow to source.