The ontogeny of bumblebee flight trajectories: from naive explorers to experienced foragers

A - Papers appearing in refereed journals

Osborne, J. L., Smith, A. D., Clark, S. J., Reynolds, D. R., Barron, M. C., Lim, K. S. and Reynolds, A. M. 2013. The ontogeny of bumblebee flight trajectories: from naive explorers to experienced foragers. PLOS ONE. 8 (11), p. e78681. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078681

AuthorsOsborne, J. L., Smith, A. D., Clark, S. J., Reynolds, D. R., Barron, M. C., Lim, K. S. and Reynolds, A. M.
Abstract

Understanding strategies used by animals to explore their landscape is essential to predict how they exploit patchy resources, and consequently how they are likely to respond to changes in resource distribution. Social bees provide a good model for this and, whilst there are published descriptions of their behaviour on initial learning flights close to the colony, it is still unclear how bees find floral resources over hundreds of metres and how these flights become directed foraging trips. We investigated the spatial ecology of exploration by radar tracking bumblebees, and comparing the flight trajectories of bees with differing experience. The bees left the colony within a day or two of eclosion and flew in complex loops of ever-increasing size around the colony, exhibiting Lévy-flight characteristics constituting an optimal searching strategy. This mathematical pattern can be used to predict how animals exploring individually might exploit a patchy landscape. The bees’ groundspeed, maximum displacement from the nest and total distance travelled on a trip increased significantly with experience. More experienced bees flew direct paths, predominantly flying upwind on their outward trips although forage was available in all directions. The flights differed from those of naïve honeybees: they occurred at an earlier age, showed more complex looping, and resulted in earlier returns of pollen to the colony. In summary bumblebees learn to find home and food rapidly, though phases of orientation, learning and searching were not easily separable, suggesting some multi-tasking.

Year of Publication2013
JournalPLOS ONE
Journal citation8 (11), p. e78681
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078681
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
FunderBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Natural Environment Research Council
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Wellcome Trust
Scottish Government
Funder project or codeDelivering Sustainable Systems (SS) [ISPG]
Impact and mitigation of emergent diseases on major UK insect pollinators [2011-2012]
Impact and mitigation of emergent diseases on major UK insect pollinators [2011-2014]
Impact and mitigation of emergent diseases on major UK insect pollinators [2012-2014]
Movement and spatial ecology in agricultural landscapes
Statistics Department (Rothamsted)
Publisher's version
Copyright license
CC BY
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online12 Nov 2013
Publication process dates
Accepted13 Sep 2013
PublisherPublic Library of Science (PLOS)
ISSN1932-6203

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