Sleep is essential for basic survival, and insufficient sleep leads to
a variety of dysfunctions. In humans, one of the most profound
consequences of sleep deprivation is imprecise or irrational
communication, demonstrated by degradation in signaling as well
as in receiving information. Communication in nonhuman animals
may suffer analogous degradation of precision, perhaps with
especially damaging consequences for social animals. However,
society-specific consequences of sleep loss have rarely been
explored, and no function of sleep has been ascribed to a truly
social (eusocial) organism in the context of its society. Here we
show that sleep-deprived honey bees (Apis mellifera) exhibit reduced
precision when signaling direction information to food
sources in their waggle dances. The deterioration of the honey
bee’s ability to communicate is expected to reduce the foraging
efficiency of nestmates. This study demonstrates the impact of
sleep deprivation on signaling in a eusocial animal. If the deterioration
of signals made by sleep-deprived honey bees and humans
is generalizable, then imprecise communication may be one detrimental
effect of sleep loss shared by social organisms.