Obstacle traversal and route choice in flying honeybees: Evidence for individual handedness.

ABSTRACT: Flying insects constantly face the challenge of choosing efficient, safe and collision-free routes while navigating through dense foliage. We examined the route-choice behavior of foraging honeybees when they encountered a barrier which could be traversed by flying through one of two apertures, positioned side by side. When the bees' choice behavior was averaged over the entire tested population, the two apertures were chosen with equal frequency when they were equally wide. When the apertures were of different width, the bees, on average, showed a preference for the wider aperture, which increased sharply with the difference between the aperture widths. Thus, bees are able to discriminate the widths of oncoming gaps and choose the passage which is presumably safer and quicker to transit.

SUBMITTER: Ong M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5667806 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature