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Q27 - Testing How Honeybees Measure Flight Distance for the Waggle Dance

Theoretical 2 Real exam question - full text reproduced under IBO's CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
Animal Communication Orientation & Navigation

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) communicates the distance of a food source to others by dancing. The bee performs “round dances” when the feeder is within 50 m. If the feeder is over 50 m, they perform “waggle dances.” The mean durations (ms) of waggle dances are plotted in Figure 1 against distance (m). To determine how bees measure this distance, two types of wooden tunnels with a food source were positioned outdoors (Figure 2). The tunnel is 6 m long. The walls and floor were randomly patterned (black-and-white, 1 cm pixels) in experiments 1, 2, and 4, and axially striped in experiment 3. In experiments 2 and 4, the mean waggle durations were 529 ms and 441 ms, respectively (experiment 2’s feeder was farther inside the tunnel, at the far/closed end, 35 m outside-equivalent; experiment 4’s feeder was near the tunnel entrance, 6 m outside-equivalent, both continuing outside the tunnel to reach the total distance).

Figure 1. Figure 1.

Figure 2. Figure 2.

Using the information and data, determine which of the statements are true or which are false.

Q27-1. How long is the duration of the waggle dance when the tunnel was extended to be two-times longer in the opposite direction of the hive in experiment 2?
Q27-2. Choose the most appropriate answer from the following statements: 1. When the walls and floor are lined with vertically oriented stripes in experiment 3, most bees will perform the waggle dance. 2. Bees perform a waggle dance with the same duration for two different feeders; if bees fly to the two feeders with the same speed, the durations from the hive to the feeders are the same. 3. The duration of the waggle dance does not change if the bees fly at a different height.
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Question reproduced from IBO 2020, Theoretical Exam 2, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - attributed to the International Biology Olympiad. Open the full exam PDF · Community solutions (unofficial)