Towne William F, Ritrovato Antoinette E, Esposto Antonina, Brown Duncan F
Department of Biology, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA 19529, USA
Department of Biology, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA 19529, USA.
J Exp Biol. 2017 Jul 1;220(Pt 13):2476-2485. doi: 10.1242/jeb.160002. Epub 2017 Apr 27.
In view-based navigation, animals acquire views of the landscape from various locations and then compare the learned views with current views in order to orient in certain directions or move toward certain destinations. One landscape feature of great potential usefulness in view-based navigation is the skyline, the silhouette of terrestrial objects against the sky, as it is distant, relatively stable and easy to detect. The skyline has been shown to be important in the view-based navigation of ants, but no flying insect has yet been shown definitively to use the skyline in this way. Here, we show that honeybees do indeed orient using the skyline. A feeder was surrounded with an artificial replica of the natural skyline there, and the bees' departures toward the nest were recorded from above with a video camera under overcast skies (to eliminate celestial cues). When the artificial skyline was rotated, the bees' departures were rotated correspondingly, showing that the bees oriented by the artificial skyline alone. We discuss these findings in the context of the likely importance of the skyline in long-range homing in bees, the likely importance of altitude in using the skyline, the likely role of ultraviolet light in detecting the skyline, and what we know about the bees' ability to resolve skyline features.
在基于视图的导航中，动物从不同位置获取景观的视图，然后将学到的视图与当前视图进行比较，以便在特定方向上定向或朝着特定目的地移动。在基于视图的导航中，具有巨大潜在用途的一个景观特征是天际线，即地面物体映衬天空的轮廓，因为它距离远、相对稳定且易于察觉。已证明天际线在蚂蚁基于视图的导航中很重要，但尚未有确切证据表明飞行昆虫会以这种方式利用天际线。在此，我们表明蜜蜂确实会利用天际线进行定向。在那里，一个喂食器被自然天际线的人工复制品环绕，在阴天（以消除天体线索）下用摄像机从上方记录蜜蜂返回蜂巢的方向。当人工天际线旋转时，蜜蜂的方向也相应旋转，这表明蜜蜂仅通过人工天际线来定向。我们将在天际线在蜜蜂远程归巢中可能的重要性、利用天际线时高度可能的重要性、紫外线在检测天际线中可能的作用以及我们对蜜蜂分辨天际线特征能力的了解等背景下讨论这些发现。
