Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have therefore evolved a variety of defence strategies. Against predatory wasps, they produce highly coordinated Mexican wavelike cascades termed 'shimmering', whereby hundreds of bees flip their abdomens upwards. Although it is well known that shimmering commences at distinct spots on the nest surface, it is still unclear how shimmering is generated. In this study, colonies were exposed to living tethered wasps that were moved in front of the experimental nest. Temporal and spatial patterns of shimmering were investigated in and after the presence of the wasp. The numbers and locations of bees that participated in the shimmering were assessed, and those bees that triggered the waves were identified. The findings reveal that the position of identified trigger cohorts did not reflect the experimental path of the tethered wasp. Instead, the trigger centres were primarily arranged in the close periphery of the mouth zone of the nest, around those parts where the main locomotory activity occurs. This favours the 'special-agents' hypothesis that suggest that groups of specialized bees initiate the shimmering.

Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have evolved a plethora of defence behaviors. Against predatory wasps, including hornets, they display highly coordinated Mexican wave-like cascades termed 'shimmering'. Shimmering starts at distinct spots on the nest surface and then spreads across the nest within a split second whereby hundreds of individual bees flip their abdomens upwards. However, so far it is not known whether prey and predator interact and if shimmering has anti-predatory significance. This article reports on the complex spatial and temporal patterns of interaction between Giant honeybee and hornet exemplified in 450 filmed episodes of two A. dorsata colonies and hornets (Vespa sp.). Detailed frame-by-frame analysis showed that shimmering elicits an avoidance response from the hornets showing a strong temporal correlation with the time course of shimmering. In turn, the strength and the rate of the bees' shimmering are modulated by the hornets' flight speed and proximity. The findings suggest that shimmering creates a 'shelter zone' of around 50 cm that prevents predatory wasps from foraging bees directly from the nest surface. Thus shimmering appears to be a key defence strategy that supports the Giant honeybees' open-nesting life-style.

Eight microsatellite loci were used to investigate the genetic structure of the giant honeybee (Apis dorsata) population in northeast India. This species migrates seasonally between summer and winter nesting sites, and queens appear to return to their previously occupied site. Furthermore, there is a strong tendency for colonies of this species to aggregate at perennially utilized nesting sites that may be shared by more than 150 colonies. These behavioral features suggest that colonies within aggregations should be more related than random colonies, but that the long-distance migration could act to minimize genetic differentiation both between geographical areas and within aggregations. Our genetic study supports these conjectures arising from natural history. A. dorsata aggregations are comprised of colonies that share more alleles than expected by chance. Although queens heading neighboring colonies are not close relatives, fixation indices show significant genetic differentiation among aggregation sites. However, there appears to be sufficient gene flow among aggregations to prevent high degrees of relatedness developing between colonies within aggregations. The results also suggest that there is significant population structuring between geographical regions, although the level of structuring caused by aggregation exceeds the differentiation attributable to geographic region.

Temperature is the most frequently measured physical quantity, second only to time. Infrared (IR) technology has been utilized successfully in astronomy (for a summary,see Hermans-Killam, 2002b) and in industrial and research settings (Gruner, 2002; Madding, 1982, 1989; Wolfe & Zissis, 1993) for decades. However, fairly recent innovations have reduced costs, increased reliability, and resulted in noncontact IR sensors offering mobile, smaller units of measurement (EOI, 2002; Flir, 2000, 2001,2002). The advantages of using IR imaging are (1) rapidity in the millisecond range, facilitating measurement of moving targets,(2) noncontact procedures, allowing measurements of hazardous or physically inaccessible objects,(3) no interference and no energy lost from the target,(4) no risk of contamination, and (5) no mechanical effect on the surface of the object. All these factors have led to IR technology's becoming an area of interest for new kinds of applications and users. In both manufacturing and quality control, temperature plays an important role as an indicator of the condition of a product or a piece of machinery (EOI, 2002; Flir, 2000, 2001, 2002; Raytek, 2002). In medical and veterinary applications, IR thermometry is increasingly used in organ diagnostics, in the evaluation of sports injuries and the progression of therapy, in disease evaluation (e.g, breast cancer, arthritis, and SARS; Flir, 2003), and in injury and inflammation examinations in horses, livestock (Tivey & Banhazi, 2002), and zoo animals (Hermans-Killam, 2002a; Thiesbrummel, 2002). Lastly, physiological expressions of life processes in animals (Kastberger, Winder,& Steindl, 2001; Stabentheiner, Kovac,& Hagmüller, 1995; Stabentheiner, Kovac,& Schmaranzer, 2002; Stabentheiner & Schmarnzer, 1987) and plants (Bermadinger-Stabentheiner & Stabentheiner, 1995) can be monitored. The most recent field in which IR technology has been applied is animal behavior. This article focuses on the practical options for noncontact IR thermometry--in particular, in biological applications.

5-Methyl-2-phenyl-2-hexenal, a distinctly smelling compound, was identified as a constituent of the male scent gland secretion of two species of cave crickets, Troglophilus cavicola and T. neglectus. It is the first proof of a male specific exocrine compound in grasshoppers. A pheromonal function of the component could not be established; its possible biological role is discussed.

We report the results of a simple experiment to determine whether honeybees feed their small hive beetle nest parasites. Honeybees incarcerate the beetles in cells constructed of plant resins and continually guard them. The longevity of incarcerated beetles greatly exceeds their metabolic reserves. We show that survival of small hive beetles derives from behavioural mimicry by which the beetles induce the bees to feed them trophallactically. Electronic supplementary material to this paper can be obtained by using the Springer LINK server located at htpp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-002-0326-y.

Light and transmission electron microscopy revealed pericytes of brain capillaries of moles (Talpa europaea L., 1758) as parasitized intracellularly. These host cells were enlarged and of globular or ellipsoid shape, and incorporated a cell-within-cell sequence of primary, secondary and, rarely found, tertiary developmental stages of an eukaryotic organism. Other stages like spores were not discovered either in brain or in other organs. Due to the vertebrate host, and the parasitic cells showing the enveloped state this parasite can be classified as belonging to the Myxozoa rather than Paramyxea. Since spores, which would allow an exact identification of the parasite, could not be detected and mammals are very unusual hosts for Myxozoa, the parasite was designated a myxozoan-like organism.

Viscovery SOMine is a software tool for advanced analysis and monitoring of numerical data sets. It was developed for professional use in business, industry, and science and to support dependency analysis, deviation detection, unsupervised clustering, nonlinear regression, data association, pattern recognition, and animated monitoring. Based on the concept of self-organizing maps (SOMs), it employs a robust variant of unsupervised neural networks--namely, Kohonen's Batch-SOM, which is further enhanced with a new scaling technique for speeding up the learning process. This tool provides a powerful means by which to analyze complex data sets without prior statistical knowledge. The data representation contained in the trained SOM is systematically converted to be used in a spectrum of visualization techniques, such as evaluating dependencies between components, investigating geometric properties of the data distribution, searching for clusters, or monitoring new data. We have used this software tool to analyze and visualize multiple influences of the ocellar system on free-flight behavior in giant honeybees. Occlusion of ocelli will affect orienting reactivities in relation to flight target, level of disturbance, and position of the bee in the flight chamber; it will induce phototaxis and make orienting imprecise and dependent on motivational settings. Ocelli permit the adjustment of orienting strategies to environmental demands by enforcing abilities such as centering or flight kinetics and by providing independent control of posture and flight course.

We studied the influence of specially prepared highly diluted thyroxine on the spontaneous tendency of juvenile frogs, which were at the end of thyroxine-controlled metamorphosis, to leave the water and climb onto land. The test dilution with a thyroxine concentration beyond Avogadro's value (dilution thyroxine D30) and the reference (dilution water D30) were prepared according to directions from the literature on homeopathy. A few drops of these solutions were added to tap water of basins containing the frogs. The frogs' climbing activities were monitored immediately after adding the solutions. The hypothesis derived from a preliminary study was that there is less climbing activity in frogs treated with dilution thyroxine D30 than in a reference group. This hypothesis was proven. Climbing activity diminished under the influence of dilution thyroxine D30, with statistical significance both in comparison to the effect of the analogously prepared solvent (dilution water D30) as well as in comparison to control observations before the start of treatment. When in a later step of observation the dilution water D30-control group was treated with dilution thyroxine D30, the diminishing effect on activity also occurred.