Self-assembly processes in honeybees: The phenomenon of shimmering

Abstract

Giant honeybees, Apis dorsata, have evolved a plethora of defence behaviours that enable this lifestyle. Against predatory wasps, they display Mexican wave-like cascades of shimmering whereby hundreds of bees flip their abdomens upwards in a split second. Shimmering is a type of social defence that also has relevance for task partitioning, collective decision making and social communication. Shimmering also relies on unexplored principles of information transfer and is a compelling example of self-organisation. It addresses proximate questions (how does shimmering work?) and ultimate questions (why has shimmering evolved?) and, therefore, gives rise to the discovery of interdependencies between giant honeybees as prey and its predators as part of a co-evolutionary arms race. Here, we review the underlying mechanisms of the phenomenon of shimmering and prove some of its anti-predatory goals.