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Bees and flowers: polarization sensitivity and signals

James Foster1*, Camilla Sharkey1, Heather Whitney1, Nicholas Roberts1 and Julian Partridge1
  • 1 University of Bristol, School of Biological Sciences, United Kingdom

It has long been known that flowering plants use a number of uni-modal and multi-modal signals to attract pollinating insects (Von Frisch, 1974; Chittka & Raine, 2003; Whitney et al., 2009a). Many of these are clearly salient to humans, such as odours, visible colours and textures. The more recent discovery of signals in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum (Chittka et al., 1994) and variations in micro-scale petal texture (Whitney et al., 2009b) demonstrated flower signals that are imperceptible to humans are also of significant importance.
It is similarly well established that many insects can perceive the polarization of light. Work so far has concentrated on the use of this visual ability for navigation by skylight linear polarization patterns (Von Frisch, 1948; Wehner 2003; Dacke et al., 2004; Kraft et al., 2011) and detection of bodies of water (Schwind, 1983; Kriska et al., 2009). However, very little work has investigated what role insect polarization vision might play in signal detection.
In bees, polarization sensitivity is thought to be restricted to the upwards-looking dorsal rim area (DRA) of the eye (Labhart, 1980). This would rule out the use of polarization patterns in upwards facing flowers to signal to bees, since the signals will be perceived in the ventral portion of the eye. However, the position on the DRA does allow for sensitivity to patterns viewed from below such those on downwards facing flowers.
In this study we present psychophysical experiments demonstrating the ability of bumblebee species Bombus terrestris to learn polarization patterns as a means of identifying artificial flowers. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this ability is reliant on the direction of view of these targets, since the ability is only present for downwards facing targets and absent for upwards facing targets. These results are placed in the context of images of polarization patterns on wild foxgloves, which are bumblebee pollinated downwards facing flowers, indicating for the first time that pollinators have the capability to use polarization signals to identify flowering plants. This work may lead to a greater understanding of the interactions between bumblebees and the plants they pollinate, which include a number of economically important fruit and vegetable species, as well as opening up a new field of research in flower polarization signals.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jelena Ruscic, Ria Woodfield and Will Amos for their invaluable help in conducting these experiments.

References

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Keywords: Bombus terrestris, Dorsal Rim Area, polarization, signal

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

Presentation Type: Poster (but consider for student poster award)

Topic: Sensory: Vision

Citation: Foster J, Sharkey C, Whitney H, Roberts N and Partridge J (2012). Bees and flowers: polarization sensitivity and signals. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00142

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

* Correspondence: Mr. James Foster, University of Bristol, School of Biological Sciences, Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UG, United Kingdom, jjfoster86@gmail.com