Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (Sep 2015)
Automatic methods for long-term tracking and the detection and decoding of communication dances in honeybees
Abstract
The honeybee waggle dance communication system is an intriguing example of abstract animal communication and has been investigated thoroughly throughout the last seven decades. Typically, observables such as durations or angles are extracted manually directly from the observation hive or from video recordings to quantify dance properties, particularly to determine where bees have foraged. In recent years, biology has profited from automation, improving measurement precision, removing human bias, and accelerating data collection. As a further step, we have developed technologies to track all individuals of a honeybee colony and detect and decode communication dances automatically. In strong contrast to conventional approaches that focus on a small subset of the hive life, whether this regards time, space, or animal identity, our more inclusive system will help the understanding of the dance comprehensively in its spatial, temporal, and social context. In this contribution, we present full specifications of the recording setup and the software for automatic recognition and decoding of tags and dances, and we discuss potential research directions that may benefit from automation. Lastly, to exemplify the power of the methodology, we show experimental data and respective analyses for a continuous, experimental recording of nine weeks duration.
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