Honeybee Odometry: Performance in Varying Natural Terrain

@article{citeulike:2968071, abstract = {Recent studies have shown that honeybees flying through short, narrow tunnels with visually textured walls perform waggle dances that indicate a much greater flight distance than that actually flown. These studies suggest that the bee's “odometer” is driven by the optic flow (image motion) that is experienced during flight. One might therefore expect that, when bees fly to a food source through a varying outdoor landscape, their waggle dances would depend upon the nature of the terrain experienced en route. We trained honeybees to visit feeders positioned along two routes, each 580 m long. One route was exclusively over land. The other was initially over land, then over water and, finally, again over land. Flight over water resulted in a significantly flatter slope of the waggle-duration versus distance regression, compared to flight over land. The mean visual contrast of the scenes was significantly greater over land than over water. The results reveal that, in outdoor flight, the honeybee's odometer does not run at a constant rate; rather, the rate depends upon the properties of the terrain. The bee's perception of distance flown is therefore not absolute, but scene-dependent. These findings raise important and interesting questions about how these animals navigate reliably.}, author = {Tautz, Juergen and Zhang, Shaowu and Spaethe, Johannes and Brockmann, Axel and Si, Aung and Srinivasan, Mandyam }, citeulike-article-id = {2968071}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.0020211}, journal = {PLoS Biology}, keywords = {insects, maps, navigation, optical\_flow, social, vision}, month = {July}, number = {7}, pages = {e211+}, posted-at = {2008-07-07 01:07:23}, priority = {2}, title = {Honeybee Odometry: Performance in Varying Natural Terrain}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020211}, volume = {2}, year = {2004} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2968071 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2968071 TI - Honeybee Odometry: Performance in Varying Natural Terrain JF - PLoS Biology VL - 2 IS - 7 SP - e211 N2 - Recent studies have shown that honeybees flying through short, narrow tunnels with visually textured walls perform waggle dances that indicate a much greater flight distance than that actually flown. These studies suggest that the bee's “odometer” is driven by the optic flow (image motion) that is experienced during flight. One might therefore expect that, when bees fly to a food source through a varying outdoor landscape, their waggle dances would depend upon the nature of the terrain experienced en route. We trained honeybees to visit feeders positioned along two routes, each 580 m long. One route was exclusively over land. The other was initially over land, then over water and, finally, again over land. Flight over water resulted in a significantly flatter slope of the waggle-duration versus distance regression, compared to flight over land. The mean visual contrast of the scenes was significantly greater over land than over water. The results reveal that, in outdoor flight, the honeybee's odometer does not run at a constant rate; rather, the rate depends upon the properties of the terrain. The bee's perception of distance flown is therefore not absolute, but scene-dependent. These findings raise important and interesting questions about how these animals navigate reliably. KW - insects KW - maps KW - navigation KW - optical_flow KW - social KW - vision AU - Tautz, Juergen AU - Zhang, Shaowu AU - Spaethe, Johannes AU - Brockmann, Axel AU - Si, Aung AU - Srinivasan, Mandyam PY - 2004/07/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020211 ER -