How do bees solve navigational challenges in 3D?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Egelhaaf
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431346812

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.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Olivier Bertrand
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Hervé Aubert; Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau