How do bees solve navigational challenges in 3D?

蜜蜂如何解决 3D 导航挑战？

• 批准号: 431346812
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Martin Egelhaaf
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Laboratoire dAnalyse et dArchitecture des Systèmes (LAAS-CNRS)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/431346812?language=en
• 关键词: How; do; bees; solve; navigational

How animals capture and process information about the world to navigate successfully is a fundamental question of biology. For small insects, successful navigation may not require complex cognitive operations, but is based on an optimised combination of relatively simple mechanisms. While almost all knowledge about insect navigation is based on 2D recording, flying insects such as bees navigate in 3D. Flying at different heights can allow them to see over different distances, albeit at lower resolution, and thus use visual landmarks on different spatial scales. The goal of 3DNaviBee is to understand how bees use visual information to navigate in 3D in different motivational contexts and across spatial scales. The focus is on the bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), a model organism for insect cognition and navigation research that exhibits sophisticated spatial behaviour and can be easily analysed in artificial environments. In the search for food, bees show complex behavioural sequences with phases of orientation, exploration and route following. We test the extent to which bees adjust flight altitude to selectively use height-dependent visual information in different behavioural contexts. This is done by scientists from the Universities of Toulouse (France) and Bielefeld (Germany) working together to achieve three goals:(1) Development of a new method for recording and analysing the 3D movement of bees over several hundred metres using innovative radar technology. This approach will make it possible to carry out novel navigation experiments with bees in the laboratory and in the field and to develop powerful statistical analyses of high-resolution 3D trajectories. (2) Conduct behavioural experiments on 3D navigation of bees on different spatial scales as bees learn to orient themselves, search for resources, develop foraging routes and return to their nest. This will create completely new knowledge on the importance of elevation control for information gathering and behavioural decisions that is not possible with current methods. (3) Building an integrative model of bee 3D navigation based on our empirical data. This will be the first theoretical concept of processing mechanisms with which mini-brains navigate in 3D on ecologically relevant spatial scales. 3DNaviBee can show that the newly developed radar technology allows to track small fast flying animals in 3D at high spatial-temporal resolution to provide basic knowledge about the biology of key pollinators, to answer completely new questions about insect navigation in the field and to break new ground in motion ecology.

动物如何捕获和处理有关世界的信息以成功导航是生物学的一个基本问题。对于小昆虫来说，成功的导航可能不需要复杂的认知操作，而是基于相对简单的机制的优化组合。虽然几乎所有有关昆虫导航的知识都是基于 2D 记录，但蜜蜂等飞行昆虫却以 3D 方式导航。在不同的高度飞行可以让他们看到不同的距离，尽管分辨率较低，从而在不同的空间尺度上使用视觉地标。 3DNaviBee 的目标是了解蜜蜂如何使用视觉信息在不同的动机环境和跨空间尺度下进行 3D 导航。重点是大黄蜂（Bombus terrestris），它是一种用于昆虫认知和导航研究的模式生物，表现出复杂的空间行为，并且可以在人工环境中轻松分析。在寻找食物的过程中，蜜蜂表现出复杂的行为序列，包括定向、探索和路线跟踪等阶段。我们测试了蜜蜂调整飞行高度以在不同行为环境中选择性地使用依赖于高度的视觉信息的程度。这是由图卢兹大学（法国）和比勒费尔德大学（德国）的科学家共同完成的，目的是实现三个目标：(1) 开发一种新方法，利用创新雷达技术记录和分析蜜蜂数百米范围内的 3D 运动。这种方法将使在实验室和现场用蜜蜂进行新颖的导航实验成为可能，并对高分辨率 3D 轨迹进行强大的统计分析。 (2) 在不同空间尺度上进行蜜蜂 3D 导航行为实验，蜜蜂学习定位、寻找资源、制定觅食路线并返回巢穴。这将创造关于海拔控制对于信息收集和行为决策的重要性的全新知识，这是当前方法不可能实现的。 (3)根据我们的经验数据建立蜜蜂3D导航的综合模型。这将是微型大脑在生态相关空间尺度上进行 3D 导航的处理机制的第一个理论概念。 3DNaviBee可以表明，新开发的雷达技术可以在高时空分辨率下以3D方式跟踪小型快速飞行动物，以提供有关关键授粉媒介生物学的基础知识，回答有关昆虫在田间导航的全新问题，并在运动生态学方面开辟新天地。