Close encounters of three kinds: impacts of leg, wing and body collisions on flight performance in carpenter bees.

ABSTRACT: Flying insects often forage among cluttered vegetation that forms a series of obstacles in their flight path. Recent studies have focused on behaviors needed to navigate clutter while avoiding all physical contact and, as a result, we know little about flight behaviors that do involve encounters with obstacles. Here, we challenged carpenter bees (Xylocopa varipuncta) to fly through narrow gaps in an obstacle course to determine the kinds of obstacle encounters they experience, as well as the consequences for flight performance. We observed three kinds of encounters: leg, body and wing collisions. Wing collisions occurred most frequently (in about 40% of flights, up to 25 times per flight) but these had little effect on flight speed or body orientation. In contrast, body and leg collisions,

SUBMITTER: Burnett NP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10184765 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature