Premium
How do bees choose flight direction while foraging?
Author(s) -
SCHMIDHEMPEL PAUL
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
physiological entomology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-3032
pISSN - 0307-6962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-3032.1985.tb00065.x
Subject(s) - foraging , biology , nectar , rotation (mathematics) , directionality , orientation (vector space) , inflorescence , honey bees , ecology , artificial intelligence , pollen , computer science , geometry , mathematics , genetics
. Various authors have reported that nectar‐collecting bees usually maintain an overall degree of directionality in their successive foraging flights. I here ask what kind of cues honeybees (Apis mellifera ) use to decide on departure direction from one inflorescence to the next. In a horizontally placed flower array, individual workers were experimentally rotated while imbibing sugar solution from an artificial flower mounted on a turntable. Rotation itself did not affect the subsequent departure direction. However, rotating the bees by 180° resulted in choices that were rotated by the same amount, as compared to the control treatment (i.e. no rotation). I suggest that flight directionality is determined in bees from the spatial orientation of their body before departure (e.g. by moving to the nearest flower they face).