26201 Dennis Dr, Parksley, Virginia, United States of America.
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
PLoS One. 2023 Mar 29;18(3):e0282144. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282144. eCollection 2023.
The ability of insects to navigate and home is crucial to fundamental tasks, such as pollination, parental care, procuring food, and finding mates. Despite recent advances in our understanding of visual homing in insects, it remains unclear exactly how ground-nesting Hymenoptera are able to precisely locate their often inconspicuous or hidden reproductive burrow entrances. Here we show that the ground-nesting wasp Microbembex monodonta locates her hidden burrow entrance with the help of local landmarks, but only if their view of the wider panorama is not blocked. Moreover, the wasps are able to pinpoint the burrow location to within a few centimeters when potential olfactory, tactile and auditory cues are locally masked. We conclude that M. monodonta locate their hidden burrows relying exclusively on local visual cues in the context of the wider panorama. We discuss these results in the light of the older and more recent literature on nest recognition and homing in insects.
昆虫的导航和归巢能力对授粉、亲代照顾、获取食物和寻找配偶等基本任务至关重要。尽管我们对昆虫的视觉归巢能力有了最新的了解，但地面筑巢膜翅目昆虫究竟如何能够精确地找到它们通常不显眼或隐藏的繁殖洞穴入口，这仍然不清楚。在这里，我们表明，地面筑巢的黄蜂 Microbembex monodonta 在当地地标物的帮助下找到她隐藏的洞穴入口，但前提是它们的全景视野没有被阻挡。此外，当潜在的嗅觉、触觉和听觉线索在局部被遮蔽时，黄蜂能够将洞穴位置精确到几厘米以内。我们的结论是，M. monodonta 在更广泛的全景背景下，仅依靠局部视觉线索来定位隐藏的洞穴。我们根据关于昆虫巢穴识别和归巢的早期和近期文献来讨论这些结果。
