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When left is right and right is wrong: Collision avoidance in honeybees

Julia Groening1, 2, 3*, Laura McLeod1, 2, 3, Nikolai Liebsch1, 2, 3, Ingo Schiffner1, 2, 3 and Mandyam V. Srinivasan1, 2, 3
  • 1 University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, Australia
  • 2 University of Queensland, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Australia
  • 3 University of Queensland, ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, Australia

Although there has been considerable interest in understanding how insects use vision to guide their flight, we know relatively little about whether flying insects actively avoid mid-air collisions, and if so, how this is achieved.
We addressed this question by training honeybees to fly in a narrow tunnel to collect a reward of sugar solution, and filming their trajectories in 3D.
We recorded more than 1500 head-on encounters in over 7 hours of footage. Despite the narrow cross section of the tunnel, collisions occurred very rarely, and at a much lower rate than predicted by random chance (4.6% versus 17.5%), which indicates that bees actively avoid mid-air collisions.
Detailed 3D-analysis of 100 flight trajectories of bees approaching and passing each other reveals that bees flying at the same height avoid collisions primarily by swerving to the right or the left. The data indicates that bees are more likely to veer to the left, passing each other on their right hand side. When bees approach each other at different heights, they do not swerve. Collision avoidance manoeuvres occur only when the lateral separation of the approaching bees is lower than 30mm, and are commenced at an axial separation of about 50mm. Approaching bees appear to initiate collision avoidance simultaneously, but independently of each other.
These findings are important not only in the context of neurobiology, but also for the design of aircraft vision systems for automated collision avoidance.

Keywords: collision avoidance, flying insects, vision systems

Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation (see alternatives below as well)

Topic: Sensory: Vision

Citation: Groening J, McLeod L, Liebsch N, Schiffner I and Srinivasan M (2012). When left is right and right is wrong: Collision avoidance in honeybees. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00135

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Received: 27 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012.

* Correspondence: Dr. Julia Groening, University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia, j.groening@uq.edu.au