Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Do bees use magnetoreception?
Magnetoreception is well documented in honey bees, ants and termites.[32] In ants and bees, this is used to orient and navigate in areas around their nests and within their migratory paths.[33] For example, through the use of magnetoreception, the Brazilian stingless bee Schwarziana quadripunctata is able to distinguish differences in altitude, location, and directionality using the thousands of hair-like particles on its antennae.[34]
Etiquette was a focus of "Romper Room." The hostesses were always addressed as "Miss." The show also had a mascot, Mr. Do-Bee. Mr. Do-Bee was an oversized bumblebee who came to teach the children proper deportment. He was noted for always starting his sentence with "Do Bee," as in the imperative "Do be"; for example, "Do Bee good boys and girls for your parents!" There was also a "Mr. Don't Bee" to show children exactly what they should "not" do. "Do-Bee" balloons were made available for purchase to the public. Each balloon featured a painted sketch of "Do-Bee." When the balloons were inflated and then released, they would fly around slowly and emit a buzzing sound.
The majority of study on magnetoreception in reptiles involves turtles. Some of the earliest support for magnetoreception in turtles was found in Terrapene carolina, a species of box turtle. After successfully teaching a group of these box turtles to swim to either the east or west end of an experimental tank, the introduction of a strong magnet into the tank was enough to disrupt the learned routes.[42] As such, the learning of oriented paths seems to rely on some internal magnetic compass possessed by box turtles. Subsequent discovery of magnetite in the dura mater of Sea Turtle hatchlings supported this conclusion, as magnetite provides a means by which magnetic fields may be perceived.[43]
Magnetoreception has also been reported in the European eel by at least one study.[35]
Brood cells must be cleaned before the next use. Cells will be inspected by the queen and if unsatisfactory they will not be used. Worker bees in the cleaning phase will perform this cleaning. If the cells are not clean, the worker bee must do it again and again.
In some instances, bee gums are also still used, even with bee species that do not produce large quantities of honey (i.e. "Apis mellifera mellifera"). However, in these instances, part of the reason why bee gums are then used is that this allows the producers of the honey to distinguish themselves from other honey producers and to ask a higher price for the honey. An example where bee gums are still used is Mont-Lozère, France, although in Europe they are referred to as Log Hives. The length of these log Hives used are shorter than bee gums, they are hollowed out artificially and cut to a specific size.
Bats may also use magnetic fields to orient themselves. While it is known that bats use echolocation to navigate over short distances, it is unclear how they navigate over longer distances.[63] When Eptesicus fuscus are taken from their home roosts and exposed to magnetic fields 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise of magnetic north, they are disoriented and set off for their homes in the wrong direction. Therefore, it seems that Eptesicus fuscus is capable of magnetoreception. However, the exact use of magnetic fields by Eptesicus fuscus is unclear as the magnetic field could be used either as a map, a compass, or a compass calibrator. Recent research with another bat species, Myotis myotis, supports the hypothesis that bats use magnetic fields as a compass calibrator and their primary compass is the sun.[64]
"Galleria mellonella" (greater wax moths) do not attack the bees directly, but feed on the shed exoskeletons of bee larvae and pollen that is found in dark brood comb, which was used by the bees to hold the developing bees. Their full development to adults requires access to used brood comb or brood cell cleanings—these contain protein essential for the larval development, in the form of brood cocoons. The destruction of the comb will spill or contaminate stored honey and may kill bee larvae.
Scientists are still studying whether or not animals are affected by this, some suggesting this is why whales beach themselves. Some have stated the possibility that other migrating animals including birds and honey bees, might be affected since they also use magnetoreception to navigate, and geomagnetic storms alter the Earth's magnetic fields temporarily.Links related to power grids:
Female alfalfa leafcutter bees have stingers, but both sexes will usually use their mandibles as a defensive mechanism, usually only defending themselves when squeezed or antagonized. Therefore, bee suits, such as those required with honey bees, are not necessary when dealing with these bees. When these bees do sting, however, they do not lose their stingers or die after stinging.
A scopa (plural scopae; Latin for "broom") is any of a number of different modifications on the body of a "non-parasitic" bee that form a pollen-carrying apparatus. In most bees, the scopa is simply a particularly dense mass of elongated, often branched, hairs (or setae) on the hind leg. When present on the hind legs, the modified hairs are, at a minimum, on the tibia, but some bees also have modified hairs on the femur and/or trochanter. A few bees have, in addition to the leg hairs, many modified hairs on the ventral surface of the abdomen which are also used in pollen transport; there is one family of bees, Megachilidae, in which the modified leg hairs are absent, and the scopa is limited to the abdominal hairs (see photo). In the familiar honey bees and bumblebees, the scopa is replaced by the pollen basket (corbicula). In the Ptilothrix genus, the notably long scopa allow the members of the genus to collect long grained pollen. Bees have other types of modified hairs used to collect pollen, floral oils, or other chemicals from plants, and these can be on the face, mouthparts, or the front or middle legs, but these are not scopae; the term is explicitly restricted to hairs used to "transport" pollen. There are some bees which transport pollen internally in the crop, and these lack a scopa, as do cleptoparasitic bees, which do not gather their own pollen.
Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) may use magnetoreception when predating small rodents. When foxes perform their high-jumps onto small prey like mice and voles, they tend to jump in a north-eastern compass direction. In addition, successful attacks are "tightly clustered" to the north.[65] One study has found that when domestic dogs are off the leash and the Earth's magnetic field is calm, they prefer to urinate and defecate with their bodies aligned on a north-south axis.[66]
Sphecodes is a genus of bees from the family Halictidae, the majority of which are black and red in colour and are colloquially known as "blood bees". "Sphecodes" bees are cleptoparasitic on other bees, especially bees in the genera "Lasioglossum", "Halictus" and "Andrena". The adults consume nectar and are polylactic, i.e. generalist feeders, but because they use other bees to bring up their offspring they do not collect pollen.
This notion of magnetic navigational skills was first observed in a 2005 study conducted by Esquivel et al. on a "S. quadripunctata" nest near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study applied various levels of applied magnetic fields across the entrance of the nest. The exiting angles (both vertical and horizontal) of the individual bees were then measured as they emerged from the nest. The primary control experiment confirmed that the majority of the nest had a preferential exiting angle in accordance with the local geomagnetic field. Over the course of four months, the study group measured the two angles in comparison to various magnitudes of applied magnetic fields and compared them to observed angles in natural geomagnetic fields. A significant correlation was found between the two, definitively showing that the stingless bee relies on magnetoreception for navigational purposes.
Microbats make use of magnetoreception, in that they have a high sensitivity to the Earth's magnetic field, as birds do. Microbats use a polarity-based compass, meaning that they differentiate north from south, unlike birds, which use the strength of the magnetic field to differentiate latitudes, which may be used in long-distance travel. The mechanism is unknown but may involve magnetite particles.
Magnetoception (or magnetoreception) is the ability to detect the direction one is facing based on the Earth's magnetic field. Directional awareness is most commonly observed in birds, which rely on their magnetic sense to navigate during migration. It has also been observed in insects such as bees. Cattle make use of magnetoception to align themselves in a north-south direction. Magnetotactic bacteria build miniature magnets inside themselves and use them to determine their orientation relative to the Earth's magnetic field.
The mollusk Tochuina tetraquetra (formerly Tritonia diomedea or Tritonia gigantea) has been studied for clues as to the neural mechanism behind magnetoreception in a species. Some of the earliest work with Tochuina showed that prior to a full moon Tochuina would orient their bodies between magnetic north and east.[25] A Y-maze was established with a right turn equal to geomagnetic south and a left turn equal to geomagnetic east. Within this geomagnetic field 80% of Tochuina made a turn to the left or magnetic east. However, when a reversed magnetic field was applied that rotated magnetic north 180° there was no significant preference for either turn, which now corresponded with magnetic north and magnetic west. These results, though interesting, do not conclusively establish that Tochuina uses magnetic fields in magnetoreception. These experiments do not include a control for the activation of the Rubens’ coil in the reversed magnetic field experiments. Therefore, it is possible that heat or noise generated by the coil was responsible for the loss of choice preference. Further work with Tochuina was unable to identify any neurons that showed rapid changes in firing as a result of magnetic fields.[26][27] However, pedal 5 neurons, two bisymmetric neurons located within the Tochuina pedal ganglion, exhibited gradual changes in firing over time following 30 minutes of magnetic stimulation provided by a Rubens’ coil. Further studies showed that pedal 7 neurons in the pedal ganglion were inhibited when exposed to magnetic fields over the course of 30 minutes. The function of both pedal 5 neurons and pedal 7 neurons is currently unknown.
Along with, and often closely related to, communication, effective navigation within an environment is vital to the successful reproduction of eusocial insects. Although some organisms’ methods of navigation seem quite apparent (i.e. through modes of sight and scent) the navigational system of "Schwarziana quadripunctata" had remained elusive until quite recently. It has been determined that "S. quadripunctata" navigates, like many other bees, through the use of magnetoreception – utilizing magnetic fields in the atmosphere to recognize differences in location, altitude and directionality.
Work with mice, mole-rats and bats has shown that some mammals are capable of magnetoreception. When woodmice are removed from their home area and deprived of visual and olfactory cues, they orient themselves towards their homes until an inverted magnetic field is applied to their cage.[60] However, when the same mice are allowed access to visual cues, they are able to orient themselves towards home despite the presence of inverted magnetic fields. This indicates that when woodmice are displaced, they use magnetic fields to orient themselves if there are no other cues available. However, early studies of these subjects were criticized because of the difficulty of completely removing sensory cues, and in some because the tests were performed out of the natural environment. In others, the results of these experiments do not conclusively show a response to magnetic fields when deprived of other cues, because the magnetic field was artificially changed before the test rather than during it.[61]
Alfalfa seed production requires the presence of pollinators when the fields of alfalfa are in bloom. Alfalfa pollination is somewhat problematic, however, because western honey bees, the most commonly used pollinator, are less than ideal for this purpose; the pollen-carrying keel of the alfalfa flower trips and strikes pollinating bees on the head, which helps transfer the pollen to the foraging bee. Western honey bees, however, do not like being struck in the head repeatedly and learn to defeat this action by drawing nectar from the side of the flower. The bees thus collect the nectar, but carry no pollen, so do not pollinate the next flower they visit. Because older, experienced bees do not pollinate alfalfa well, most pollination is accomplished by young bees that have not yet learned the trick of robbing the flower without tripping the head-knocking keel. When western honey bees are used to pollinate alfalfa, the beekeeper stocks the field at a very high rate to maximize the number of young bees.
Western honey bee colonies may suffer protein stress when working alfalfa only, because of shortage of one of the amino acids comprising the pollen protein, isoleucine.
Today, the alfalfa leafcutter bee ("Megachile rotundata") is increasingly used to circumvent these problems. As a solitary but gregarious bee species, it does not build colonies or store honey, but is a very efficient pollinator of alfalfa flowers. Nesting is in individual tunnels in wooden or plastic material, supplied by the alfalfa seed growers. The leafcutter bees are used in the Pacific Northwest, while western honeybees dominate in California alfalfa seed production.
For animals the mechanism for magnetoreception is unknown, but there exist two main hypotheses to explain the phenomenon.[5] According to one model, magnetoreception is possible via the radical pair mechanism.[6] The radical-pair mechanism is well-established in spin chemistry,[7][8][9] and was speculated to apply to magnetoreception in 1978 by Schulten et al.. In 2000, cryptochrome was proposed as the "magnetic molecule", so to speak, that could harbor magnetically sensitive radical-pairs. Cryptochrome, a flavoprotein found in the eyes of European robins and other animal species, is the only protein known to form photoinduced radical-pairs in animals.[6] The function of cryptochrome is diverse across species, however, the photoinduction of radical-pairs occurs by exposure to blue light, which excites an electron in a chromophore.[10] The Earth's magnetic field is only 0.5 gauss and so it is difficult to conceive of a mechanism, other than phase shift, by which such a field could lead to any chemical changes other than those affecting the weak magnetic fields between radical pairs.[11] Cryptochromes are therefore thought to be essential for the light-dependent ability of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to sense magnetic fields.[12]
In 2008, Reppert discovered the necessity of "Cry" for light-dependent magnetoreception responses in "Drosophila". He also showed that magnetoreception requires UVA/blue light, the spectrum corresponding with the action spectrum of "Drosophila" CRY.
These data were the first to genetically implicate CRY as a component of the input pathway or the chemical-based pathway of magnetoreception. Applying these findings to his work with the monarch, Reppert has shown that both monarch CRY1 and CRY2 proteins, when transgenically expressed in CRY-deficient flies, successfully restore magnetoreception function. These results propose the presence of a CRY-mediated magnetosensitivity system in monarchs that may act in concordance with the sun compass to aid navigation. In 2011, Reppert also discovered that human CRY2 can substitute as a functional magnetoreceptor in CRY-deficient flies, a discovery that warrants additional research into magnetosensitivity in humans.
The second proposed model for magnetoreception relies on clusters composed of iron, a natural mineral with strong magnetism. The idea is favorable as it builds up on the magnetoreceptive abilities of magnetotactic bacteria. These iron clusters have been observed mainly in homing pigeons in the upper beak,[13] but also in other taxa[14].
Magnetoreception (also magnetoception) is a sense which allows an organism to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location. This sensory modality is used by a range of animals for orientation and navigation,[1] and as a method for animals to develop regional maps. For the purpose of navigation, magnetoreception deals with the detection of the Earth's magnetic field.
Magnetobiology Quantum biology §Magnetoreception Salmon run