Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.

Central place foragers, such as pollinating bees, typically develop circuits (traplines) to visit multiple foraging sites in a manner that minimizes overall travel distance. Despite being taxonomically widespread, these routing behaviours remain poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracking th...

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Autores principales: Mathieu Lihoreau, Nigel E Raine, Andrew M Reynolds, Ralph J Stelzer, Ka S Lim, Alan D Smith, Juliet L Osborne, Lars Chittka
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Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2012
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:8450b68079784fdc9781b3f601ad077d2021-11-18T05:37:26ZRadar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.1544-91731545-788510.1371/journal.pbio.1001392https://doaj.org/article/8450b68079784fdc9781b3f601ad077d2012-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/23049479/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1544-9173https://doaj.org/toc/1545-7885Central place foragers, such as pollinating bees, typically develop circuits (traplines) to visit multiple foraging sites in a manner that minimizes overall travel distance. Despite being taxonomically widespread, these routing behaviours remain poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracking the foraging history of animals in the wild. Here we examine how bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) develop and optimise traplines over large spatial scales by setting up an array of five artificial flowers arranged in a regular pentagon (50 m side length) and fitted with motion-sensitive video cameras to determine the sequence of visitation. Stable traplines that linked together all the flowers in an optimal sequence were typically established after a bee made 26 foraging bouts, during which time only about 20 of the 120 possible routes were tried. Radar tracking of selected flights revealed a dramatic decrease by 80% (ca. 1500 m) of the total travel distance between the first and the last foraging bout. When a flower was removed and replaced by a more distant one, bees engaged in localised search flights, a strategy that can facilitate the discovery of a new flower and its integration into a novel optimal trapline. Based on these observations, we developed and tested an iterative improvement heuristic to capture how bees could learn and refine their routes each time a shorter route is found. Our findings suggest that complex dynamic routing problems can be solved by small-brained animals using simple learning heuristics, without the need for a cognitive map.Mathieu LihoreauNigel E RaineAndrew M ReynoldsRalph J StelzerKa S LimAlan D SmithJuliet L OsborneLars ChittkaPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleBiology (General)QH301-705.5ENPLoS Biology, Vol 10, Iss 9, p e1001392 (2012)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Biology (General)
QH301-705.5
spellingShingle Biology (General)
QH301-705.5
Mathieu Lihoreau
Nigel E Raine
Andrew M Reynolds
Ralph J Stelzer
Ka S Lim
Alan D Smith
Juliet L Osborne
Lars Chittka
Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
description Central place foragers, such as pollinating bees, typically develop circuits (traplines) to visit multiple foraging sites in a manner that minimizes overall travel distance. Despite being taxonomically widespread, these routing behaviours remain poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracking the foraging history of animals in the wild. Here we examine how bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) develop and optimise traplines over large spatial scales by setting up an array of five artificial flowers arranged in a regular pentagon (50 m side length) and fitted with motion-sensitive video cameras to determine the sequence of visitation. Stable traplines that linked together all the flowers in an optimal sequence were typically established after a bee made 26 foraging bouts, during which time only about 20 of the 120 possible routes were tried. Radar tracking of selected flights revealed a dramatic decrease by 80% (ca. 1500 m) of the total travel distance between the first and the last foraging bout. When a flower was removed and replaced by a more distant one, bees engaged in localised search flights, a strategy that can facilitate the discovery of a new flower and its integration into a novel optimal trapline. Based on these observations, we developed and tested an iterative improvement heuristic to capture how bees could learn and refine their routes each time a shorter route is found. Our findings suggest that complex dynamic routing problems can be solved by small-brained animals using simple learning heuristics, without the need for a cognitive map.
format article
author Mathieu Lihoreau
Nigel E Raine
Andrew M Reynolds
Ralph J Stelzer
Ka S Lim
Alan D Smith
Juliet L Osborne
Lars Chittka
author_facet Mathieu Lihoreau
Nigel E Raine
Andrew M Reynolds
Ralph J Stelzer
Ka S Lim
Alan D Smith
Juliet L Osborne
Lars Chittka
author_sort Mathieu Lihoreau
title Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
title_short Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
title_full Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
title_fullStr Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
title_full_unstemmed Radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
title_sort radar tracking and motion-sensitive cameras on flowers reveal the development of pollinator multi-destination routes over large spatial scales.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2012
url https://doaj.org/article/8450b68079784fdc9781b3f601ad077d
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