Year: 2022

COMBINED CUES. “Bumble bees can use electric information to discriminate between rewarding and unrewarding flowers. They can also learn colour discrimination tasks faster when colour cues are paired with electric field cues similar in magnitude to those surrounding natural flowers. In effect, bumble bees did not learn as readily in an electrically neutral environment.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

CHARGED BEES. “The sensory basis for electroreception in honey bees was hypothesised to be the antennae, electro-mechanically coupled to the surrounding e-field in virtue of bees being electrically charged, and thus subject to electrostatic forces.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

THE ELECTRIC ORGAN. “Transduction of these forces was proposed to be taking place in the antennal Johnston’s organ. Greggers et al. (2013) demonstrate that honey bee antennae oscillate under electric field stimulation, and this stimulation can elicit activity in the antennal nerve.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

VARIETIES OF ORGANS. “It seems that although bumble bees and honey bees can both detect weak e-fields, they do so using different but physically analogous electromechanical systems.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

INSECT WIDE ORGANS. “Neither mechanosensory hairs nor antennae are unique to bees. It is, therefore, possible that other arthropods also use these structures to detect electric fields. Mechanosensory structures in insects have previously been shown to be involved in detection of various fluid-mechanical signals, by a diverse range of arthropods.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

PLANT ELECTRIC FIELDS. “5 m tall trees growing on flat ground are shown to produce substantial alterations in the electric field strength in the surrounding air. The positive charge in the atmosphere draws a negative charge to the surface of the trees.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

THE ZONE. “At the scale of the flower, we name the local distortions in background e-field around a flower, the “floral electric field”. This is the scale at which bees are acting and interacting.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

TWO CHARGE SOURCES. “Bees are not electrically connected to the earth, like flowers are, yet they also gain a charge as they fly through the air. The acquisition and maintenance of charge on a bee is a key factor in their ability to detect electric fields, with just slight increases in charge causing large gains in electromechanical sensitivity of both hairs and antennae.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

CHARGE LANGUAGE. “It is also crucial to intraspecific electrical communication in honey bees; the dancing bee must be charged to convey electrical signals to fellow bees within the hive. A bee’s bulk charge will also induce stronger electrical interactions between itself and any flower it visits, strengthening electrostatic forces on pollen. The mechanism by which bees gain their charge, however, is not well understood.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn

CHARGE CONVEYANCE. “The tendency of bees to become positively charged is well evidenced. This charge generates forces on other charged objects in the vicinity of the bee from flowers to the electroreceptor hairs and antennae of conspecifics.” https://lnkd.in/dz2UJCDk View in LinkedIn