ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2023
Nest-associated scent marks help bumblebees localizing their nest in visually ambiguous situations.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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5 citing papers in PubMed.
- A Bumblebee-Inspired Spatial Memory Navigation Framework for Robotic Odor Source Localization.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sulfoxaflor Impairs Bumblebee Memory Across Moderate and Extreme Temperatures.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Navigating in clutter: how bumblebees optimize flight behaviour through experience.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Bumblebees locate goals in 3D with absolute height estimation from ventral optic flow.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Bumblebees increase their learning flight altitude in dense environments.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Social insects such as ants and bees are excellent navigators. To manage their daily routines bumblebees, as an example, must learn multiple locations in their environment, like flower patches and their nest. While navigating from one location to another, they mainly rely on vision. Although the environment in which bumblebees live, be it a meadow or a garden, is visually stable overall, it may be prone to changes such as moving shadows or the displacement of an object in the scenery. Therefore, bees might not solely rely on visual cues, but use additional sources of information, forming a multimodal guidance system to ensure their return home to their nest. Here we show that the home-finding behavior of bumblebees, when confronted with a visually ambiguous scenario, is strongly influenced by natural scent marks they deposit at the inconspicuous nest hole when leaving their nest. Bumblebees search for a longer time and target their search with precision at potential nest locations that are visually familiar, if also marked with their natural scent. This finding sheds light on the crucial role of odor in helping bees find their way back to their inconspicuous nest.
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