There are various ways to poke and prod humans to force them to stay awake prior to measuring the effects of sleep deprivation. But how to make bees in a hive lose sleep?
Klein invented a magnetic machine aptly named the "insominator," a contraption he passed over quietly resting bees during the night to deprive them of sleep. The bees, outfitted with small metallic backpacks, were jostled into activity by magnets in the insominator, and this was repeated over the course of normal sleep time.
Barrett then recorded the behaviors of the sleepless bees and discovered they weren't able to communicate as well the direction of nectar-filled flower patches to their sisters through their usual waggle dance.
"The dance was not necessarily wrong, but it was less precise than dances performed by bees that were not sleep-deprived," says Klein. "We expect that a less precise dance would lead to fewer followers making it to the food source, and we hope to test this in the future."
This movie spotlights one waggle dance by a forager that had been sleep-deprived theprevious night. The average dance angle of this dance is superimposed over the dancer and variance around this angle indicates imprecision of signaling direction information.
(Photo Credit: Dr. Barrett Klein. Pupating.org.)
To deprive honey bees of sleep, Dr. Barrett Klein used a magnetic contraption called the "insominator" (on the left). Sleeping bees affixed with a small piece of metal were jostled awake when the insominator passed over them. Klein found that sleeplessness led to poor signaling by foraging bees about the location of food sources.
(Photo Credit: Dr. Barrett Klein, pupating.org.)
Source: University of Texas at Austin