Honeybees Learn Landscape Features during Exploratory Orientation Flights

Degen, Jacqueline; Kirbach, Andreas; Reiter, Lutz; Lehmann, Konstantin; Norton, Philipp; Storms, Mona; Koblofsky, Miriam; Winter, Sarah; Georgieva, Petya B.; Nguyen, Hai; Chamkhi, Hayfe; Meyer, Hanno Gerd; Singh, Pawan Kumar; Manz, Gisela; Greggers, Uwe; Menzel, Randolf

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.013

Cited by 63 publications

(58 citation statements)

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“…It also suggests a need for revision of models used in predictions of what bees can resolve in a given scene for biologically relevant tasks such as identification of food sources, particularly given recent studies highlighting the relevance of feature detectability in navigation30.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual acuity of the honey bee retina and the limits for feature detection

Rigosi

Wiederman

O’Carroll

2017

Sci Rep

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Visual abilities of the honey bee have been studied for more than 100 years, recently revealing unexpectedly sophisticated cognitive skills rivalling those of vertebrates. However, the physiological limits of the honey bee eye have been largely unaddressed and only studied in an unnatural, dark state. Using a bright display and intracellular recordings, we here systematically investigated the angular sensitivity across the light adapted eye of honey bee foragers. Angular sensitivity is a measure of photoreceptor receptive field size and thus small values indicate higher visual acuity. Our recordings reveal a fronto-ventral acute zone in which angular sensitivity falls below 1.9°, some 30% smaller than previously reported. By measuring receptor noise and responses to moving dark objects, we also obtained direct measures of the smallest features detectable by the retina. In the frontal eye, single photoreceptors respond to objects as small as 0.6° × 0.6°, with >99% reliability. This indicates that honey bee foragers possess significantly better resolution than previously reported or estimated behaviourally, and commonly assumed in modelling of bee acuity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual acuity of the honey bee retina and the limits for feature detection

Rigosi

Wiederman

O’Carroll

2017

Sci Rep

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“…Learning flights of flying hymenoptera include repeated arcs, loops and turn-backs (honeybees : Becker, 1958;Capaldi and Dyer, 1999;Capaldi et al, 2000;Degen et al, 2015Degen et al, , 2016Lehrer, 1991Lehrer, , 1993Opfinger, 1931;Vollbehr, 1975;wasps: Peckham and Peckham, 1898;Stürzl et al, 2016;Tinbergen, 1932;Zeil, 1993a,b;Zeil et al, 1996;bumblebees: Collett et al, 2013;Hempel de Ibarra et al, 2009;Philippides et al, 2013;Riabinina et al, 2014;Robert et al, 2017;Wagner, 1907). Dung beetles perform rotations about their vertical axis before rolling a ball away from the dung pile (Baird et al, 2012), during which they take a snapshot of the celestial scenery (el Jundi et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the location of their nest. Since the first descriptions over a century ago (Peckham and Peckham, 1898;Wagner, 1907), learning flights have been investigated in great detail in wasps (Tinbergen, 1932;Zeil, 1993a,b;Zeil et al, 1996), honeybees (Becker, 1958;Capaldi and Dyer, 1999;Lehrer, 1991Lehrer, , 1993Opfinger, 1931;Vollbehr, 1975) and bumblebees Hempel de Ibarra et al, 2009;Philippides et al, 2013;Robert et al, 2017) using increasingly sophisticated techniques like harmonic radar (Capaldi et al, 2000;Degen et al, 2015Degen et al, , 2016Osborne et al, 2013) or high-speed cameras (Riabinina et al, 2014;Stürzl et al, 2016). Much less is known about learning walks of ants (Fleischmann et al, 2016;Jayatilaka, 2014;Müller and Wehner, 2010;Muser et al, 2005;Nicholson et al, 1999;Stieb et al, 2012;Wehner et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species-specific differences in the fine structure of learning walk elements inCataglyphisants

Fleischmann

Grob

Wehner

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

123

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Cataglyphis desert ants are famous navigators. Like all central place foragers, they are confronted with the challenge to return home, i.e. relocate an inconspicuous nest entrance in the ground, after their extensive foraging trips. When leaving the underground nest for the first time, desert ants perform a striking behavior, so-called learning walks that are well structured. However, it is still unclear how the ants initially acquire the information needed for sky-and landmark-based navigation, in particular how they calibrate their compass system at the beginning of their foraging careers. Using high-speed video analyses, we show that different Cataglyphis species include different types of characteristic turns in their learning walks. Pirouettes are full or partial rotations (tight turns about the vertical body axis) during which the ants frequently stop and gaze back in the direction of the nest entrance during the longest stopping phases. In contrast, voltes are small walked circles without directed stopping phases. Interestingly, only Cataglyphis ant species living in a cluttered, and therefore visually rich, environment (i.e. C. noda and C. aenescens in southern Greece) perform both voltes and pirouettes. They look back to the nest entrance during pirouettes, most probably to take snapshots of the surroundings. In contrast, C. fortis inhabiting featureless saltpans in Tunisia perform only voltes and do not stop during these turns to gaze back at the nest -even if a set of artificial landmarks surrounds the nest entrance.

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“…Rishworth et al, 2014; Fay et al, 2016; Lamb et al, 2017), fishes (Gurarie et al, 2016) and mammals (Lambin & Yoccoz, 2001; Gopukumar, 2003; Gurarie, Andrews, & Laidre, 2009; Briscoe et al, 2018). Very few studies were conducted on insects (but see Degen et al, 2016 for bees), despite the recent availability of adapted miniaturized devices (Kissling, Pattemore, & Hagen, 2014; Nunes-Silva et al, 2019). Here we examine whether the use of life-long individual monitoring devices can reveal the ontogenetic shifts in the behaviour of the free-ranging western honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), as a case study of central-place foraging insects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring ontogenetic shifts in central-place foraging insects: a case study with honey bees

Réquier

Henry

Decourtye³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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13 7 INRAE, UE 1255 APIS "Abeilles paysages interactions et systèmes de culture", Abstract 27 1. Measuring time-activity budgets over the complete individual lifespan is now 28 possible for many animals with the recent advances of life-long individual 29 monitoring devices. Although analyses of changes in the patterns of time-activity 30 budgets have revealed ontogenetic shifts in birds or mammals, no such technique 31has been applied to date on insects. 32 2. We tested an automated breakpoint-based procedure to detect, assess and 33 quantify shifts in the temporal pattern of the flight activities in honey bees. We 34 assumed that the learning and foraging stages of honey bees will differ in several 35 respects, to detect the age at onset of foraging (AOF). 36 3. Using an extensive dataset covering the life-long monitoring of 2,100 individuals, 37 we compared the AOF outputs with the more conventional approaches based on 38 arbitrary thresholds. We further evaluated the robustness of the different methods 39 comparing the foraging time-activity budget allocations between the presumed 40 foragers and confirmed foragers.41 4. We revealed a clear-cut learning-foraging ontogenetic shift that differs in duration, 42 frequency, and time of occurrence of flights. Although AOF appeared to be highly 43 plastic among bees, the breakpoint-based procedure seems better able to detect it 44 than arbitrary threshold-based methods that are unable to deal with inter-individual 45 variation. 46 5. We developed the aof R-package including a broad range of examples with both 47 simulated and empirical dataset to illustrate the simplicity of use of the procedure.48 This simple procedure is generic enough to be derived from any individual life-long 49 monitoring devices recording the time-activity budgets of honey bees, and could 50 3 propose new ecological applications of bio-logging to detect ontogenetic shifts in 51 the behaviour of central-place foraging insects. 52 53

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Honeybees Learn Landscape Features during Exploratory Orientation Flights

Cited by 63 publications

References 6 publications

Visual acuity of the honey bee retina and the limits for feature detection

Visual acuity of the honey bee retina and the limits for feature detection

Species-specific differences in the fine structure of learning walk elements inCataglyphisants

Measuring ontogenetic shifts in central-place foraging insects: a case study with honey bees

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