How to Join a Wave: Decision-Making Processes in Shimmering Behavior of Giant Honeybees (Apis dorsata)

Shimmering is a collective defence behaviour in Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) whereby individual bees flip their abdomen upwards, producing Mexican wave-like patterns on the nest surface. Bucket bridging has been used to explain the spread of information in a chain of members including three testable concepts: first, linearity assumes that individual “agent bees” that participate in the wave will be affected preferentially from the side of wave origin. The directed-trigger hypothesis addresses the coincidence of the individual property of trigger direction with the collective property of wave direction. Second, continuity describes the transfer of information without being stopped, delayed or re-routed. The active-neighbours hypothesis assumes coincidence between the direction of the majority of shimmering-active neighbours and the trigger direction of the agents. Third, the graduality hypothesis refers to the interaction between an agent and her active neighbours, assuming a proportional relationship in the strength of abdomen flipping of the agent and her previously active neighbours. Shimmering waves provoked by dummy wasps were recorded with high-resolution video cameras. Individual bees were identified by 3D-image analysis, and their strength of abdominal flipping was assessed by pixel-based luminance changes in sequential frames. For each agent, the directedness of wave propagation was based on wave direction, trigger direction, and the direction of the majority of shimmering-active neighbours. The data supported the bucket bridging hypothesis, but only for a small proportion of agents: linearity was confirmed for 2.5%, continuity for 11.3% and graduality for 0.4% of surface bees (but in 2.6% of those agents with high wave-strength levels). The complimentary part of 90% of surface bees did not conform to bucket bridging. This fuzziness is discussed in terms of self-organisation and evolutionary adaptedness in Giant honeybee colonies to respond to rapidly changing threats such as predatory wasps scanning in front of the nest

Qualitative study about the ways teachers react to feedback from resident evaluations

Contains fulltext : 127324.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Currently, one of the main interventions that are widely expected to contribute to teachers' professional development is confronting teachers with feedback from resident evaluations of their teaching performance. Receiving feedback, however, is a double edged sword. Teachers see themselves confronted with information about themselves and are, at the same time, expected to be role models in the way they respond to feedback. Knowledge about the teachers' responses could be not only of benefit for their professional development, but also for supporting their role modeling. Therefore, research about professional development should include the way teachers respond to feedback. METHOD: We designed a qualitative study with semi-structured individual conversations about feedback reports, gained from resident evaluations. Two researchers carried out a systematic analysis using qualitative research software. The analysis focused on what happened in the conversations and structured the data in three main themes: conversation process, acceptance and coping strategies. RESULTS: The result section describes the conversation patterns and atmosphere. Teachers accepted their results calmly, stating that, although they recognised some points of interest, they could not meet with every standard. Most used coping strategies were explaining the results from their personal beliefs about good teaching and attributing poor results to external factors and good results to themselves. However, some teachers admitted that they had poor results because of the fact that they were not "sharp enough" in their resident group, implying that they did not do their best. CONCLUSIONS: Our study not only confirms that the effects of feedback depend first and foremost on the recipient but also enlightens the meaning and role of acceptance and being a role model. We think that the results justify the conclusion that teachers who are responsible for the day release programmes in the three departments tend to respond to the evaluation results just like human beings do and, at the time of the conversation, are initially not aware of the fact that they are role models in the way they respond to feedback