Information processing and behavioral control by multimodal stimuli in honey bee

本研究对蜜蜂在各种感官刺激下的飞行行为进行了实验和分析。为建立飞行昆虫飞行控制机理的数学模型提供了新的思路。在视觉、听觉和嗅觉刺激下，我们建立了一种新的实验装置和方案来测量自由和束缚飞行条件下的飞行特性。在飞行模拟器上的实验表明，形状和颜色信息在蜜蜂视觉中具有不同的位置通用性。研究还表明，蜂群中由摇摆舞引起的有节奏的声音，即使在飞行中也倾向于向声源定位。在稳定气流和风向的风洞中，用摄像机记录蜜蜂的飞行面积、速度、角速度和方向。在风洞中心放置一个有气味的人工喂食器来训练蜜蜂。取下喂食器后，比较在有或没有嗅觉刺激的情况下的飞行行为，嗅觉刺激来自喂食器位置逆风处的玻璃管。实验结果表明，气味区内外的速度、角速度和方向是不同的。在气味范围外，飞行轨迹往往是弯曲或弯曲的。记忆场所的回忆和外部感觉信号的获取这两种行为控制过程存在并相互转换，从而改变个体的飞行特性。行为的可变性对于适应环境变化可能很重要。

In this study, flight behavior of honeybee to various kinds of sensory stimuli was experimented and analyzed. It is expected to provide new insight into construct a mathematical model for flight control mechanism of the flight insect. We are developed a new experimental setup and protocol to measure the flight properties under the free and thethered flight conditions stimulating with visual, auditory and olfactory stimuli. In the thethered experiments by our flight simulator, it was shown that shape and color information has a different positional universality in the honeybee vision. It was also shown that rhythmic sounds caused by the waggle dance in the honeybee colony tended to make orientation to the sound source even under the flight. Furthermore, using a wind tunnel, in which the airflow and wind direction were stabilized, we recorded flying bees with a video camera to analyze the flight area, velocity, angular velocity and direction. Bees were trained with an artificial feeder with an odor in the center of wind tunnel. After the feeder was removed, the flight behavior was compared under the condition with or without the olfactory stimulus, given from a glass pipe, located upwind from the feeder place. In this experiment, the results shown that velocity, angular velocity and direction were different between the inside and the outside of the odor area. Flight trajectories tend to be bent or curve in the just outside of the odor range. Two type of behavioral control process, recalling memory place and acquiring external sensory signal, were existed and switched to make variation of individual flight properties. The variability of behaviors could be important to adapt to the environmental changes.