http://ethologistsunite.tribe.net/thread/6cfe5062-0878-4cf7-b71f-4ebf9d06b414?format=rss Tribe.net. Local Connections http://ethologistsunite.tribe.net/thread/6cfe5062-0878-4cf7-b71f-4ebf9d06b414#c980e845-2e3b-4019-8531-635d14753992 Frisch (1937). The language of bees. * From: Prickly pear <rosinbio@xxxxxxxxx> * Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 09:16:06 -0000 We know that shortly after WWII v. Frisch published his amazing "discovery" of the of the honeybee "dance language", whereby honeybee- recruits "instinctively" obtain and use spatial information, contained in foragers'-dances, about the location of their foragers' food-site, to help them find the source on their own. The "discovery" soon became a revered ruling paradigm, which earned v. Frisch world wide fame, including numerous prestigious prizes, and finally also the Nobel Prize, in 1973; a full 6 years after Wenner & his team had already discovered, and published in 1967, that honeybee-recruits use only odor, and were "rewarded" by being quickly turned into pariahs. The free weekly online Science News e-Letter has an interesting practice. In its Timeline it always includes items published in Science News during the same week 70 years ago. The Timeline for Oct. 5, 2007, thus reproduces verbatim the report on v. Frisch's honeybee- research, as published in Science News of Oct. 2, 1937. The report is a bit fuzzy, and provides no reference. (They apparently did not bother about such matters then.) But examining the article by Frisch (1937). The language of bees. Science Progress, 32(125): 29-37, makes it quite clear that the report could only have been based on that article, that was in turn based on a guest lecture v. Frisch had delivered at the University College of London, in 1937, on all his honeybee-research. The article by Frisch (1937) clearly shows that v. Frisch's pre-WWII studies on honeybee-recruitment, had already led him to conclude that honeybee recruits use only odoir; that the conclusion was fully justified; and that his results already grossly contradicted his post- WWII "dance language". After the "discovery" of his post WWII "dance language", he suppressed his pre-WWII results, which discredited the "discovery". No wonder, in spite of 60 years of almost endless attempts, by scientists all over the world, no one has yet been able to experimentally confirm the existence of v. Frisch's post-WWII "dance language". Wenner & his team, did not realize that they were being punished for having unknowingly rediscovered and published in 1967, what v. Frisch had already discovered and published much earlier, (with a very extensive German summary actually published in 1923), until I accidentally stumbled on a reprint of Frisch (1937) in The 1939 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, and published the find in vol. 84 of J. theoret. Biol. of 1980. The reprint was later cited in the 1990 book by Wenner & wells; Anatomy of a Controversy: The Question of a "Language" Among bees. Another reprint of Frisch (1937) was then published, (with an introduction by Wenner), in Bee World in 1993. The honeybee "dance language" controversy actually concerns the very foundations of the whole field of behavioral science, i.e. the problem of the existence of "instincts". aunch "dance language" supporters, nonetheless, still persist in ignoring the article by Frisch (1937). It is, therefore, pleasing to find that the "ghost of that publication has now arisen to still haunt and taunt" them. . Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:36:35 GMT http://ethologistsunite.tribe.net/thread/6cfe5062-0878-4cf7-b71f-4ebf9d06b414#c980e845-2e3b-4019-8531-635d14753992 Wendy 2007-12-31T04:36:35Z