Honeybee navigation: Nature and calibration of the 'odometer'

Science

Volumn 287, Issue 5454, 2000, Pages 851-853

  Srinivasan, Mandyan V ^a   Zhang, Shaowu ^a   Altwein, Monika ^b   Tautz, Jürgen ^b  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEE; DISTANCE PERCEPTION; ENERGY CONSUMPTION; FEEDING BEHAVIOR; NONHUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SPATIAL DISCRIMINATION; VISUAL ACUITY;

APIS MELLIFERA; APOIDEA; INSECTA;

EID: 0034603161     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5454.851     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. K. von Frisch, The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993).
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4. _, J. Exp. Biol. 199, 155 (1996).
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6. M. V. Srinivasan, S. W. Zhang, N. Bidwell, J. Exp. Biol. 200, 2513 (1997).
7. The texture was a random black-and-white Julesz pattern of pixel size 1 cm by 1 cm.
8. R. Boch, Z. Vergl. Physiol. 40, 289 (1957).
9. The feeder's position in the tunnel was altered by moving it in small steps over a period of 2 hours. After reaching the final position, a further period of 2 hours was allowed before dances were filmed.
10. The stripes were black and white and had a period of 8 cm.
11. The distances were determined using an accurate digital map of the university campus (see map at Science Online, www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/ 1046508.shl). Only one distance was tested at any given time.
12. To prevent undesirable intercolony interactions, we ran the outdoor flight experiments with the two hives in sequence, not concurrently. No colony-specific or route-specific differences were apparent.
13. J. Tautz, K. Rohrseitz, D. C. Sandeman, Nature 382, 32 (1996).
14. Waggle dances were video-filmed at 25 frames per second and were later played back for frame-by-frame analysis. The duration of each waggle phase was measured in terms of the number of frames over which it occurred.
15. K. von Frisch, (1), pp. 100-101.
16. M. V. Srinivasan, M. Lehrer, W. H. Kirchner, S. W. Zhang, Vis. Neurosci. 6, 519 (1991).
17. Further work is necessary to ascertain the precise conditions under which image motion for odometry is assessed by the ventral [see (3)] or lateral [see (6)] fields of view.
18. R. Bisetzky, Z. Vergl. Physiol. 40, 264 (1957).
19. W. H. Kirchner and U. Braun, Anim. Behav. 48, 1437 (1994).
20. We thank E. Ball for advice, H. Zhu for invaluable assistance with the experiments, H. Waldie for constructing the hives, and R. Mark for providing space for this work. Supported partly by grants RG 84/97 from the Human Frontier Science Program and N00014-99-1-0506 from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research (M.V.S.) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant Ta 82/7-2 (J.T.).