Orientation flights of solitary wasps (Cerceris; Sphecidae; Hymenoptera)

• DOI: 10.1007/bf00189396
• Publication Date: 2004-09-25T07:05:50Z
• Authors: J. Zeil
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences

Bees and wasps are known to use a visual representation of the nest environment to guide the final approach to their nest. It is also known that they acquire this representation during an orientation flight performed on departure. A detailed film analysis shows that orientation flights in solitary wasps of the genus Cerceris consist of a systematic behavioural sequence: after lift-off from the nest entrance, wasps fly in ever increasing arcs around the nest. They fly along these arcs obliquely to their long axis and turn so that the nest entrance is held in the left or right visual field at retinal positions between 30° and 70° from the midline. Horizontal distance from the nest and height above ground increase throughout an orientation flight so that the nest is kept at retinal elevations between 45° and 60° below the horizon. The wasps' rate of turning is constant at between 100°/s and 200°/s independent of their distance from the nest and their ground velocity increases with distance. The consequence of this is that throughout the flight wasps circle at a constant angular velocity around the nest. Orientation flights are strongly influenced by landmark lay-out. Wasps adjust their flight-path and their orientation in a way that allows them to fixate the nest entrance and to hold the closest landmark in their frontal visual field. The orientation flight generates a specific topography of motion parallax across the visual field. This could be used by wasps to acquire a series of snapshots that all contain the nest position, to acquire snapshots of close landmarks only (distance filtering), to exclude shadow contours from their visual representation (figure-ground discrimination) or to gain information on the distance of landmarks relative to the nest.