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Large Scale Homing in Honeybees

Honeybee foragers frequently fly several kilometres to and from vital resources, and communicate those locations to their nest mates by a symbolic dance language. Research has shown that they achieve this feat by memorizing landmarks and the skyline panorama, using the sun and polarized skylight as...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pahl, Mario, Zhu, Hong, Tautz, Jürgen, Zhang, Shaowu
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21602920
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019669
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author Pahl, Mario
Zhu, Hong
Tautz, Jürgen
Zhang, Shaowu
author_facet Pahl, Mario
Zhu, Hong
Tautz, Jürgen
Zhang, Shaowu
author_sort Pahl, Mario
collection PubMed
description Honeybee foragers frequently fly several kilometres to and from vital resources, and communicate those locations to their nest mates by a symbolic dance language. Research has shown that they achieve this feat by memorizing landmarks and the skyline panorama, using the sun and polarized skylight as compasses and by integrating their outbound flight paths. In order to investigate the capacity of the honeybees' homing abilities, we artificially displaced foragers to novel release spots at various distances up to 13 km in the four cardinal directions. Returning bees were individually registered by a radio frequency identification (RFID) system at the hive entrance. We found that homing rate, homing speed and the maximum homing distance depend on the release direction. Bees released in the east were more likely to find their way back home, and returned faster than bees released in any other direction, due to the familiarity of global landmarks seen from the hive. Our findings suggest that such large scale homing is facilitated by global landmarks acting as beacons, and possibly the entire skyline panorama.
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spelling pubmed-30943362011-05-19 Large Scale Homing in Honeybees Pahl, Mario Zhu, Hong Tautz, Jürgen Zhang, Shaowu PLoS One Research Article Honeybee foragers frequently fly several kilometres to and from vital resources, and communicate those locations to their nest mates by a symbolic dance language. Research has shown that they achieve this feat by memorizing landmarks and the skyline panorama, using the sun and polarized skylight as compasses and by integrating their outbound flight paths. In order to investigate the capacity of the honeybees' homing abilities, we artificially displaced foragers to novel release spots at various distances up to 13 km in the four cardinal directions. Returning bees were individually registered by a radio frequency identification (RFID) system at the hive entrance. We found that homing rate, homing speed and the maximum homing distance depend on the release direction. Bees released in the east were more likely to find their way back home, and returned faster than bees released in any other direction, due to the familiarity of global landmarks seen from the hive. Our findings suggest that such large scale homing is facilitated by global landmarks acting as beacons, and possibly the entire skyline panorama. Public Library of Science 2011-05-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3094336/ /pubmed/21602920 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019669 Text en Pahl et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Pahl, Mario
Zhu, Hong
Tautz, Jürgen
Zhang, Shaowu
Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title_full Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title_fullStr Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title_full_unstemmed Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title_short Large Scale Homing in Honeybees
title_sort large scale homing in honeybees
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094336/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21602920
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019669
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