ArticleScientific reports2016
Signatures of a globally optimal searching strategy in the three-dimensional foraging flights of bumblebees.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bumblebees locate goals in 3D with absolute height estimation from ventral optic flow.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Revealing complex mosquito behaviour: a review of current automated video tracking systems suitable for tracking mosquitoes in the field.Parasites & vectors · 2025Review
- Tracking the flight and landing behaviour of western flower thrips in response to single and two-colour cues.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Foraging behavior in visual search: A review of theoretical and mathematical models in humans and animals.Psychological research · 2022Review
- Characterizing long-range search behavior in Diptera using complex 3D virtual environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Review
- Bumblebees learn foraging routes through exploitation-exploration cycles.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Article
- Target tracking and 3D trajectory acquisition of cabbage butterfly (P. rapae) based on the KCF-BS algorithm.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Revisiting GUD: An empirical test of the size-dependency of patch departure behaviour.PloS one · 2018Article
- The evolutionary origins of Lévy walk foraging.PLoS computational biology · 2017Article
- The Weierstrassian movement patterns of snails.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- A Lévy-flight diffusion model to predict transgenic pollen dispersal.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
- Obstacle traversal and route choice in flying honeybees: Evidence for individual handedness.PloS one · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Simulated annealing is a powerful stochastic search algorithm for locating a global maximum that is hidden among many poorer local maxima in a search space. It is frequently implemented in computers working on complex optimization problems but until now has not been directly observed in nature as a searching strategy adopted by foraging animals. We analysed high-speed video recordings of the three-dimensional searching flights of bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) made in the presence of large or small artificial flowers within a 0.5 m(3) enclosed arena. Analyses of the three-dimensional flight patterns in both conditions reveal signatures of simulated annealing searches. After leaving a flower, bees tend to scan back-and forth past that flower before making prospecting flights (loops), whose length increases over time. The search pattern becomes gradually more expansive and culminates when another rewarding flower is found. Bees then scan back and forth in the vicinity of the newly discovered flower and the process repeats. This looping search pattern, in which flight step lengths are typically power-law distributed, provides a relatively simple yet highly efficient strategy for pollinators such as bees to find best quality resources in complex environments made of multiple ephemeral feeding sites with nutritionally variable rewards.
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