Passage Discussion

[AllyMaeBell]

JUNE 2010, PASSAGE II:

Passage A

This passage begins by providing background information and then introducing the first side of the argument (that dancing honeybees use low-frequency sounds to communicate). However, the author quickly introduces challenges to this argument. At the end of the passage, however, the author confirms that sounds emitted during the honeybees’ dance are in fact an essential part of honeybee communication.

Summary of Paragraphs

Paragraph 1 starts by providing background information on the historical investigations into the ability of the honeybee to recruit nestmates to a good food source and introduces the problem of determining how honeybees transmit that information.

Paragraph 2 explains one theory on how honeybees transmit information, through low-frequency sounds, then offers challenges and a competing theory that honeybees transmit information through smell.

Paragraph 3 presents evidence that honeybees do not transmit information through smell, and then concludes that they do indeed transmit information through sound.

Passage B

This passage begins with background information about animal communication in general, and then quickly focuses in on the argument that some species can communicate symbolically. It gives an example of symbolic communication amongst vervets. Then it explains symbolic communication amongst honeybees, and concludes with an example of how bees respond selectively to the communication of their foragers.

Summary of Paragraphs

Paragraph 1 starts by claiming that some animal species communicate symbolically, and gives the example of the vervet, which responds differently to prerecorded vervet calls that alerted the vervets to a predator of a particular type.

Paragraph 2 gives the example of the honeybee dance as symbolic communication and olfactory cues are not the source of honeybee communication.

Paragraph 3 claims that bees do not follow just any cues, and gives the example of bees that did not follow a forager to food in a boat in the middle of a lake because (the scientist assumes) no pollinating flowers grew there.

See the attached diagram below.