Dear Everyone,

I am Songkun Su (Ph.D), an associate professor at the College of Animal Science of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. I do research on honeybees, on aspects such as honeybee behavior, genetics and health. My email address is susongkun@zju.edu.cn

Thank you very much for taking the time to read our paper on the honeybee dance language. Here, I would like to speak for all the authors to make a response to the comments on our article.

In the acknowledgements section of the paper, we intended to thank Dr. Martin Giurfa for his hard work on the manuscript in his capacity as Academic Editor. We apologise for any misunderstanding that the current wording of the acknowledgements may have caused. We thank Professor Bjorn Blembs for his comment on this point.

We also thank Dr. Martin Giurfa for his encouragement in the comments section of the PLoS ONE website. As suggested by him, we have started to carry out new experiments to explore the possibility of social learning in the species-mixed colony.

As for the comments from Ms Rosin, I thank you for your concern regarding our paper. I greatly admire your courage in fighting against the dance language hypothesis of Karl von Frisch. However, the bulk of the scientific evidence to date still supports this hypothesis. Please see the review papers of Professor Gard W. Otis from the University of Guelph in this regard. The review papers are:

Emily M. Smith and Gard W. Otis. The "Dance language" of Honey Bee: A Controversy Revisited -Part I of Two Parts. American Bee Journal, 2006,146(3): 242-246.
Emily M. Smith and Gard W. Otis. Resolution of a Controversy: Functionality of the Dance language of the Honey Bee - Part II - Conclusion. American Bee Journal, 2006,146(4): 335-340.

There were also two papers elucidating the underlying neural mechanisms of honeybee dance language in 2007. Please see:

Brockmann A, Robinson G E. Central projections of sensory systems involved in honey bee dance language communication. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 2007, 70: 125-136.
Hsu C Y, Ko F Y, Li C W, Fann K, Lue J T. Magnetoreception system in honeybees (Apis mellifera). PLoS ONE, 2007, 2(4): e395.

We believe that our new results also support the dance language hypothesis instead of the odor hypothesis. Nevertheless, I would not hesitate to cooperate with you in your fight against the dance language hypothesis of Karl von Frisch if I were to come across any sound evidence that discredits it. Do let me know if you make any new discoveries in this field, and feel free to forward any resulting peer-reviewed publications to my email address; I always strive to keep my mind open to all manner of information which might lead to the truth.

I once again thank my friends and colleagues worldwide for their attention.