Humans have turned the construction of spaces into an art form, but we are not the only species with such dazzling achievements. A particular genus of stingless bees from Southeast Asia and Australia really takes that idea to another level, creating spiral hives that rival the Guggenheim of New York.
We know that bees are smart, but it has been a mystery to know how Tetragonula the bees manage to create their intricate spiral, target and other hives irregularly.
Now, an international team of researchers has stepped up to find out; Surprisingly, when scientists used mathematical models to investigate the patterns found in hives, they discovered that the creation of hives had striking similarities to crystal formation.
(a. Elke Haege, b – d. Tim Heard)
Above: Structures of (a) target or target patterns (T. carbonaria), (b) spirals (T. carbonaria), (c) double spirals (T. carbonaria) and (d) more disordered terraces (T. hockingsi) .
“Crystal growth and honeycomb construction are two systems that operate within very different spheres of science. So what leads to similar structures? This is the beauty of the applicability of mathematics to nature.” the researchers write in their article.
“It so often turns out that similar laws and similar principles govern the formation of very different systems in different areas of science and can therefore be described by the same mathematics.”
As you can see in the image below, the honeycomb is not a flat structure. Instead, the layers are raised to allow the bees to enter the terraces below. This, the researchers write, can be thought of as a bee version of the spiral levels of the Guggenheim Museum, a 20th-century structure known as one of New York’s most architecturally significant buildings.
Spiral hive and the spiral levels of the Guggenheim. (Tim heard; Wallygva / Wikimedia / CC BY 3.0)
“One of us, Antonio Osuna, showed me some photos of the honeycombs and I was hooked,” one of the researchers, the interdisciplinary physicist at the University of Granada, Julyan Cartwright, told ScienceAlert.
“From then on, we tried to determine how these patterns appear in the case of bees, and we were able to take ideas that we had developed by looking at the growth of crystals and how mollusks produce mother-of-pearl, both of which show spiral and objective patterns very similar to those of bees. “
When the team modeled how this type of structure is formed, they used a couple of parameters to model the honeycomb into shape. First there is the R value, which means that different patterns are formed depending on the radius of a layer of hive cells.
Then there is α, which provides the random probability distribution. In crystal growth this would be caused by impurities, and in honeycomb construction it would be how flat the bees can form a layer.
The larger the R, the larger each layer of the target or spiral will be, with fewer layers overall. The higher the α, the more ‘messy’ the terraces will get.
(Cardoso et al., JR Soc. Interface, 2020)
But while we understand a pattern, this doesn’t really explain why bees in this genus create such amazing patterns, rather than just building regular old honeycomb layers.
While a study looking exclusively at mathematical models can’t definitively say why bees do this, the team believes it’s not a blueprint but a few behavioral rules that push bees to create these structures, using only ‘information. local’.
“When humans build, we usually employ an architect who makes a plan of the entire structure. That is global information,” explains Cartwright.
“It’s hard to imagine how bees could have an architect to design their combs. But if they don’t use global information, how do they build them? The equivalent for us humans would be to build a house brick by brick without an architect’s plan.” how bees can do this only with local information. “
This is definitely not the last time we will hear about the intelligence of bees – amid rippling dances, math, and incredible spiral homes, we are sure they still have tricks under their buzzing little sleeves.
The research has been published in the Royal Society Interface magazine.
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