The effect of optic flow cues on honeybee flight control in wind

Abstract

To minimize the risk of colliding with the ground or other obstacles, flying animals need to control both their ground speed and ground height. This task is particularly challenging in wind, where head winds require an animal to increase its airspeed to maintain a constant ground speed and tail winds may generate negative airspeeds, rendering flight more difficult to control. In this study, we investigate how head and tail winds affect flight control in the honeybee Apis mellifera , which is known to rely on the pattern of visual motion generated across the eye—known as optic flow—to maintain constant ground speeds and heights. We find that, when provided with both longitudinal and transverse optic flow cues (in or perpendicular to the direction of flight, respectively), honeybees maintain a constant ground speed but fly lower in head winds and higher in tail winds, a response that is also observed when longitudinal optic flow cues are minimized. When the transverse component of optic flow is minimized, or when all optic flow cues are minimized, the effect of wind on ground height is abolished. We propose that the regular sidewards oscillations that the bees make as they fly may be used to extract information about the distance to the ground, independently of the longitudinal optic flow that they use for ground speed control. This computationally simple strategy could have potential uses in the development of lightweight and robust systems for guiding autonomous flying vehicles in natural environments.