Accelerated landings in stingless bees are triggered by visual threshold cues
Abstract
Most flying animals rely primarily on visual cues to coordinate and control their trajectory when landing. Studies of visually guided landing typically involve animals that decrease their speed before touchdown. Here, we investigate the control strategy of the stingless beeScaptotrigona depilis, which instead accelerates when landing on its narrow hive entrance. By presenting artificial targets that resemble the entrance at different locations on the hive, we show that these accelerated landings are triggered by visual cues. We also found thatS. depilisinitiated landing and extended their legs when the angular size of the target reached a given threshold. Regardless of target size, the magnitude of acceleration was the same and the bees aimed for the same relative position on the target suggesting thatS. depilisuse a computationally simple but elegant ‘stereotyped' landing strategy that requires few visual cues.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0437
Entities
People
- Emily Baird
- Isabel Alves-dos-santos
- Marie Dacke
- Pierre Tichit
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- European Regional Development Fund
- Lund University
- National Council for Scientific and Technological Development
- Stockholm University
- Swedish Research Council