Figures
Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) wearing a radar transponder.
Pollinating bees must typically visit a large number of flowers before they can return to their nest with a filled honey-stomach. They are thus faced with a challenge equivalent to the familiar “Travelling Salesman Problem”—to link multiple locations with an efficient route that minimizes travel distance. Here, bees' strategies in route optimization are quantified by tracking individuals over long distances with harmonic radar. It turns out that bees initially follow tortuous paths while exploring their environment for new food locations, but rapidly discover food sources and link them with an optimal circuit, using a simple trial-and-error algorithm. See Lihoreau et al. (e1001392) in this issue.
Image Credit: Andrew Martin
Citation: (2012) PLoS Biology Issue Image | Vol. 10(9) September 2012. PLoS Biol 10(9): ev10.i09. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pbio.v10.i09
Published: September 25, 2012
Copyright: © Martin. 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 credited.
Pollinating bees must typically visit a large number of flowers before they can return to their nest with a filled honey-stomach. They are thus faced with a challenge equivalent to the familiar “Travelling Salesman Problem”—to link multiple locations with an efficient route that minimizes travel distance. Here, bees' strategies in route optimization are quantified by tracking individuals over long distances with harmonic radar. It turns out that bees initially follow tortuous paths while exploring their environment for new food locations, but rapidly discover food sources and link them with an optimal circuit, using a simple trial-and-error algorithm. See Lihoreau et al. (e1001392) in this issue.
Image Credit: Andrew Martin