How do bees solve navigational challenges in 3D?

动物如何捕捉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。虽然几乎所有关于昆虫导航的知识都是基于2D记录，但像蜜蜂这样的飞行昆虫是在3D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，因此可以使用不同空间尺度上的视觉地标。3DNaviBee的目标是了解蜜蜂如何利用视觉信息在不同的动机背景下跨空间尺度在3D中导航。重点是大黄蜂(Bombus Terrestris)，这是一种昆虫认知和导航研究的模式生物，表现出复杂的空间行为，可以很容易地在人工环境中进行分析。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、探索和路线跟踪阶段。我们测试了蜜蜂在多大程度上调整飞行高度，以便在不同的行为背景下选择性地使用依赖高度的视觉信息。这项工作由法国图卢兹大学和德国比勒费尔德大学的科学家共同完成，旨在实现三个目标：(1)开发一种新方法，利用创新的雷达技术记录和分析蜜蜂在数百米范围内的3D运动。这种方法将有可能在实验室和野外用蜜蜂进行新的导航实验，并开发出强大的高分辨率三维轨迹统计分析。(2)在蜜蜂学会自我定位、寻找资源、发展觅食路线并返回巢的过程中，在不同空间尺度上进行蜜蜂3D导航的行为实验。这将产生关于高度控制对于信息收集和行为决策的重要性的全新知识，这是目前方法所不可能做到的。(3)在实验数据的基础上，建立了蜜蜂三维导航的综合模型。这将是微型大脑在与生态相关的空间尺度上以3D方式导航的第一个处理机制的理论概念。3DNaviBee可以展示新开发的雷达技术允许以高时空分辨率以3D方式跟踪快速飞行的小型动物，以提供关于关键传粉者生物学的基本知识，回答关于昆虫在野外导航的全新问题，并在运动生态学方面开辟新的天地。

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.