How bumblebees use lateral and ventral optic flow cues for position control in environments of different proximity

Linander, Nellie; Baird, Emily; Dacke, Marie

doi:10.1007/s00359-017-1173-9

Cited by 17 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We refer to the blue circle as the target and to the pink-and-white pattern as the background. The chequerboard pattern was necessary for the bees to stabilize their flight Linander et al, 2017 . An Eppendorf tube cap mounted on a transparent acrylic sheet (60 × 80 mm) was filled with syrup and placed over the target.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dominant Role of Visual Motion Cues in Bumblebee Flight Control Revealed Through Virtual Reality

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Flying bees make extensive use of optic flow: the apparent motion in the visual scene generated by their own movement. Much of what is known about bees' visually-guided flight comes from experiments employing real physical objects, which constrains the types of cues that can be presented. Here we implement a virtual reality system allowing us to create the visual illusion of objects in 3D space. We trained bumblebees, Bombus ignitus, to feed from a static target displayed on the floor of a flight arena, and then observed their responses to various interposing virtual objects. When a virtual floor was presented above the physical floor, bees were reluctant to descend through it, indicating that they perceived the virtual floor as a real surface. To reach a target at ground level, they flew through a hole in a virtual surface above the ground, and around an elevated virtual platform, despite receiving no reward for avoiding the virtual obstacles. These behaviors persisted even when the target was made (unrealistically) visible through the obstructing object. Finally, we challenged the bees with physically impossible ambiguous stimuli, which give conflicting motion and occlusion cues. In such cases, they behaved in accordance with the motion information, seemingly ignoring occlusion.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dominant Role of Visual Motion Cues in Bumblebee Flight Control Revealed Through Virtual Reality

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…2 g). Altogether, these results suggest that ventral optic flow is important for bees to conduct well-controlled flights, both when cruising towards a food source (Baird et al 2006 ; Portelli et al 2010 ; Linander et al 2016 , 2017 ) as well as while performing learning flights.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

The role of spatial texture in visual control of bumblebee learning flights

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When leaving the nest for the first time, bees and wasps perform elaborate learning flights, during which the location of the nest is memorised. These flights are characterised by a succession of arcs or loops of increasing radius centred around the nest, with an incremental increase in ground speed, which requires precise control of the flight manoeuvres by the insect. Here, we investigated the role of optic flow cues in the control of learning flights by manipulating spatial texture in the ventral and panoramic visual field. We measured height, lateral displacement relative to the nest and ground speed during learning flights in bumblebees when ventral and panoramic optic flow cues were present or minimised, or features of the ground texture varied in size. Our observations show that ventral optic flow cues were required for the smooth execution of learning flights. We also found that bumblebees adjusted their flight height in response to variations of the visual texture on the ground. However, the presence or absence of panoramic optic flow did not have a substantial effect on flight performance. Our findings suggest that bumblebees mainly rely on optic flow information from the ventral visual field to control their learning flights.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00359-018-1274-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

show abstract

“…Previous work in different insects has shown that the texture presented in the ventral and lateral field of view is important for flight control (Linander et al 2017 , 2018 ; Portelli et al 2011 ; Straw et al 2010 ). Our results suggest that it would be interesting to do similar experiments in Episyrphys hoverflies, by e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We took photos of the ground over which the hoverfly was performing its behavior and panoramic photographs of the surrounding. We focused on images from the ventral and lateral parts of the visual field as these appear to be particularly important for insect flight control (Linander et al 2017 ; 2018 ; Portelli et al 2011 ; Straw et al 2010 ). In addition, panoramic images have been used extensively to understand motion vision coding in the insect brain (for hoverfly examples, see e.g., O’Carroll et al 2011 , 2012 ; Barnett et al 2010 ; Straw et al 2008 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Image statistics of the environment surrounding freely behaving hoverflies

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Natural scenes are not as random as they might appear, but are constrained in both space and time. The 2-dimensional spatial constraints can be described by quantifying the image statistics of photographs. Human observers perceive images with naturalistic image statistics as more pleasant to view, and both fly and vertebrate peripheral and higher order visual neurons are tuned to naturalistic image statistics. However, for a given animal, what is natural differs depending on the behavior, and even if we have a broad understanding of image statistics, we know less about the scenes relevant for particular behaviors. To mitigate this, we here investigate the image statistics surrounding Episyrphus balteatus hoverflies, where the males hover in sun shafts created by surrounding trees, producing a rich and dense background texture and also intricate shadow patterns on the ground. We quantified the image statistics of photographs of the ground and the surrounding panorama, as the ventral and lateral visual field is particularly important for visual flight control, and found differences in spatial statistics in photos where the hoverflies were hovering compared to where they were flying. Our results can, in the future, be used to create more naturalistic stimuli for experimenter-controlled experiments in the laboratory.

show abstract

How bumblebees use lateral and ventral optic flow cues for position control in environments of different proximity

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

The Dominant Role of Visual Motion Cues in Bumblebee Flight Control Revealed Through Virtual Reality

The Dominant Role of Visual Motion Cues in Bumblebee Flight Control Revealed Through Virtual Reality

The role of spatial texture in visual control of bumblebee learning flights

Image statistics of the environment surrounding freely behaving hoverflies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About