Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London are helping to perfect a technique used to catch serial killers, by testing it on bumblebees.
Geographic
profiling (GP) is a technique used by police forces around the world to
help them prioritise lists of suspects in investigations of serial
crimes. It uses the sites of a serial killer's crimes to predict where
the killer is most likely to live.
Dr Nigel Raine, and Dr Steve
Le Comber, from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical
Sciences, along with Kim Rossmo, the former detective who invented the
technique, have used this criminology technique to look at patterns of
foraging in bees.
Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface the team found that by observing bees foraging in the lab, combined
with computer model simulations, they could use GP to distinguish
between different types of foraging behaviour. The work was funded by
the Wellcome Trust, BBSRC and EPSRC.*
GP relies on two things;
the fact that most serial crimes happen close to the killer's home; and
that the killer's home is surrounded by a 'buffer zone' - an area where
the opportunity to commit a crime is comparatively low. These two
parameters allow criminologists to create a geoprofile, which shows the
areas where the killer is most likely to live. The more accurate the GP
model – the more precise the geoprofile and the quicker the police can
track down the killer.
Dr Raine explains: "GP is interesting to
biologists because it can tell us which strategies animals use when
foraging. The approach works well for very different animals: from bees
and bats to great white sharks."
The research is also of
interest to criminologists, as the experiments can be used to test the
GP technique - something which is impossible to do with criminals, for
obvious reasons. The results of the lab experiments allow the GP
criminologists to perfect their technique, and predict the serial
killer's location with more accuracy.
Although GP has been
applied to bat foraging data by two of the authors, this bee study is
the first time that the assumptions of GP technique have been tested
using an experiment. This study suggests that bees could create their
own 'buffer zone' around the hive where they don't forage, to reduce
the risk of predators and parasites locating their nest.
The
results showed that GP can be used to find the entrance to a bee hive,
from observing the locations of the flowers that bees visit. This has
implications for bee conservation. In future, GP could be applied to
help locate bee nests, or areas of potential nesting habitat – a
valuable tool for reversing the numbers of rare or endangered bumblebee
species.
Source: EurekAlert (Press Release)
