scholarly journals Honeybee navigation en route to the goal: visual flight control and odometry

1996 ◽  
Vol 199 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Srinivasan ◽  
S Zhang ◽  
M Lehrer ◽  
T Collett
Keyword(s):  
Energy Expenditure ◽  
Apparent Motion ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Food Source ◽  
Wind Load ◽  
Optomotor Response ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Image Velocity ◽  
Average Image

Recent research has uncovered a number of different ways in which bees use cues derived from optic flow for navigational purposes. The distance flown to a food source is gauged by integrating the apparent motion of the visual world that is experienced en route. In other words, bees possess a visually driven 'odometer' that is robust to variations in wind load and energy expenditure. Bees flying through a tunnel maintain equidistance to the flanking walls by balancing the apparent speeds of the images of the walls. This strategy enables them to negotiate narrow passages or to fly between obstacles. The speed of flight in a tunnel is controlled by holding constant the average image velocity as seen by the two eyes. This avoids potential collisions by ensuring that the bee slows down when flying through narrow passages. Bees landing on a horizontal surface hold constant the image velocity of the surface as they approach it. This automatically ensures that flight speed decreases with altitude and is close to zero at touchdown. The movement-sensitive mechanisms underlying these various behaviours seem to be different, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, from those mediating the well-investigated optomotor response.

scholarly journals Optic Flow: Perceiving and Acting in a 3-D World

i-Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 204166952098725
Author(s):  
Brian Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Ecological Niche ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
The Many ◽  
Concept Of Information ◽  
Radical Ideas

In 1979, James Gibson completed his third and final book “The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception”. That book can be seen as the synthesis of the many radical ideas he proposed over the previous 30 years – the concept of information and its sufficiency, the necessary link between perception and action, the need to see perception in relation to an animal's particular ecological niche and the meanings (affordances) offered by the visual world. One of the fundamental concepts that lies beyond all of Gibson's thinking is that of optic flow: the constantly changing patterns of light that reach our eyes and the information it provides. My purpose in writing this paper has been to evaluate the legacy of Gibson's conceptual ideas and to consider how his ideas have influenced and changed the way we study perception.

scholarly journals Optic Flow: A History

i-Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 204166952110557
Author(s):  
Diederick C. Niehorster
Keyword(s):  
Optic Flow ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Self Motion

The concept of optic flow, a global pattern of visual motion that is both caused by and signals self-motion, is canonically ascribed to James Gibson's 1950 book “ The Perception of the Visual World.” There have, however, been several other developments of this concept, chiefly by Gwilym Grindley and Edward Calvert. Based on rarely referenced scientific literature and archival research, this article describes the development of the concept of optic flow by the aforementioned authors and several others. The article furthermore presents the available evidence for interactions between these authors, focusing on whether parts of Gibson's proposal were derived from the work of Grindley or Calvert. While Grindley's work may have made Gibson aware of the geometrical facts of optic flow, Gibson's work is not derivative of Grindley's. It is furthermore shown that Gibson only learned of Calvert's work in 1956, almost a decade after Gibson first published his proposal. In conclusion, the development of the concept of optic flow presents an intriguing example of convergent thought in the progress of science.

scholarly journals Humans navigate with stereo olfaction

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (27) ◽  
pp. 16065-16071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuli Wu ◽  
Kepu Chen ◽  
Yuting Ye ◽  
Tao Zhang ◽  
Wen Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Apparent Motion ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Spatial Navigation ◽  
Olfactory Cues ◽  
Trigeminal System ◽  
Human Navigation ◽  
Psychophysical Testing ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Self Motion ◽  
Human Olfaction

Human navigation relies on inputs to our paired eyes and ears. Although we also have two nasal passages, there has been little empirical indication that internostril differences yield directionality in human olfaction without involving the trigeminal system. By using optic flow that captures the pattern of apparent motion of surface elements in a visual scene, we demonstrate through formal psychophysical testing that a moderate binaral concentration disparity of a nontrigeminal odorant consistently biases recipients’ perceived direction of self-motion toward the higher-concentration side, despite that they cannot verbalize which nostril smells a stronger odor. We further show that the effect depends on the internostril ratio of odor concentrations and not the numeric difference in concentration between the two nostrils. Taken together, our findings provide behavioral evidence that humans smell in stereo and subconsciously utilize stereo olfactory cues in spatial navigation.

scholarly journals Flight control of fruit flies: dynamic response to optic flow and headwind

2017 ◽  
Vol 220 (11) ◽  
pp. 2005-2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiaran K. K. Lawson ◽  
Mandyam V. Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Response ◽  
Flight Control ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Fruit Flies

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

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1943) ◽  
pp. 20203051
Author(s):  
Emily Baird ◽  
Norbert Boeddeker ◽  
Mandyam V. Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Flight Control ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Transverse Component ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Ground Speed ◽  
Simple Strategy ◽  
Longitudinal Optic ◽  
Transverse Optic ◽  
Robust Systems

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.

Lateral optic flow does not influence distance estimation in the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis

2000 ◽  
Vol 203 (7) ◽  
pp. 1113-1121 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Ronacher ◽  
K. Gallizzi ◽  
S. Wohlgemuth ◽  
R. Wehner
Keyword(s):  
Flow Field ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Food Source ◽  
Motion Parallax ◽  
Distance Estimation ◽  
Desert Ants ◽  
Desert Ant ◽  
Walking Speeds ◽  
Cataglyphis Fortis

The present account answers the question of whether desert ants (Cataglyphis fortis) gauge the distance they have travelled by using self-induced lateral optic-flow parameters, as has been described for bees. The ants were trained to run to a distant food source within a channel whose walls were covered with black-and-white gratings. From the food source, they were transferred to test channels of double or half the training width, and the distance they travelled before searching for home and their walking speeds were recorded. Since the animals experience different motion parallax cues when walking in the broader or narrower channels, the optic-flow hypothesis predicted that the ants would walk faster and further in the broader channels, but more slowly and less far in the narrower channels. In contrast to this expectation, neither the walking speeds nor the searching distances depended on the width or height of the channels or on the pattern wavelengths. Even when ventral-field visual cues were excluded by covering the eyes with light-tight paint, the ants were not influenced by lateral optic flow-field cues. Hence, walking desert ants do not depend on self-induced visual flow-field cues in gauging the distance they have travelled, as do flying honeybees, but can measure locomotor distance exclusively by idiothetic means.

Adaptable internal representations drive cerebellum-mediated predictive control of an innate behavior

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sriram Narayanan ◽  
Aalok Varma ◽  
Vatsala Thirumalai
Keyword(s):  
Optic Flow ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Optomotor Response ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
Larval Zebrafish ◽  
Stimulus Timing ◽  
The Brain

AbstractThe brain uses internal models to estimate future states of the environment based on current inputs and to predict consequences of planned actions. Neural mechanisms that underlie the acquisition and use of these predictive models are poorly understood. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we show clear evidence for predictive processing in the larval zebrafish brain. We find that when presented with repetitive optic flow stimuli, larval zebrafish modulate their optomotor response by quickly acquiring internal representations of the optic flow pattern. Distinct subcircuits in the cerebellum are involved in the predictive representation of stimulus timing and in using them for motor planning. Evidence for such predictive internal representations appears quickly within two trials, lasts over minute timescales even after optic flow is stopped and quickly adapts to changes in the pattern. These results point to an entrainment-based mechanism that allows the cerebellum to rapidly generate predictive neural signals ultimately leading to faster response times.

THERMOREGULATION IN COLONIES OF VESPULA ARENARIA AND VESPULA MACULATA (HYMENOPTERA: VESPIDAE): III. HEAT PRODUCTION IN QUEEN NESTS

1977 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 615-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. L. Gibo ◽  
A. Temporale ◽  
T. P. Lamarre ◽  
B. M. Soutar ◽  
H. E. Dew
Keyword(s):  
Energy Expenditure ◽  
Production Process ◽  
Heat Production ◽  
Food Source ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Nest Temperature ◽  
Energy Expenditures

AbstractThe V. arenaria queen was able to heat her nest shortly after it was constructed, and expended up to 550 cal per hour per gram of biomass to accomplish this. In contrast, the V. maculata colony was not heated until it was 11 days old, by which time the brood consisted of about 15–20 large larvae which probably played a major role in the heat production process. When both colonies were about 2 weeks old, energy expenditures of more than 400 cal/h could be maintained for several hours, and the nest temperature could be elevated as much as 4°C above the ambient. During these periods the larvae probably accounted for as much as 66–71% of this energy expenditure. In addition to playing an active role in heating the nest, the larvae apparently provide the queen with a food source while she is producing heat during non-foraging periods.

scholarly journals The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Lecoeur ◽  
Marie Dacke ◽  
Dario Floreano ◽  
Emily Baird
Keyword(s):  
Flight Control ◽  
Optic Flow ◽  
Insect Flight ◽  
Cluttered Environments
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