Bumblebees spontaneously map location of conspecific using geometry and features

Abstract

Researchers of vertebrate navigation have investigated and debated intensely the existence of independent processes underlying spatial representation of environmental geometry and featural cues (e.g., landmarks). One of the most well-known behavioural instantiations of this dissociation originates from the differences in the way animals map locations in the surrounding environment with respect to the external cues such as boundaries or landmarks. Invertebrate researchers have joined this debate in the past few years, showing that insects can be trained to encode spatial locations using a variety of cues within small enclosures. In the present paper, we test insects in a non-rewarded, spontaneous navigation task. We observed bumblebees' spatial navigation in response to the observed location of a conspecific, over manipulations of cue type and arena size. The results indicate that bumblebees spontaneously use both boundaries and features to guide their spatial behaviour. We discuss the similarities and differences in their behaviours to those of vertebrates and speculate on the implications of these findings.