Hearing in Honey Bees: Detection of Air-Particle Oscillations
WILLIAM F. TOWNE 1 and
WOLFGANG H. KIRCHNER 2
1 Department of Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, and Department of Biology, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA 19530.
2 Zoologisches Institut der Universitat Würzburg, Würzburg, FRG.
Although the airborne sounds produced by dancing honey bees seem essential in the bees' dance communication, attempts to show directly that bees can detect airborne sounds have been unsuccessful. It is shown here that bees can in fact detect airborne sounds and that they do so by detecting air-particle movements. Most vertebrates, by contrast, detect pressure oscillations. Because all traveling sound waves have both components, either can be used in sound detection. The bees' acoustic sense appears to be sensitive enough to allow bees to detect the air-particle movements that occur within several millimeters of a sound-emitting dancer.
Submitted on November 29, 1988
Accepted on March 27, 1989
