Bumblebees aren鈥檛 just hard workers, they鈥檙e efficient, too. These insects have a grasp of maths that enables them to crack the classic travelling salesman problem as they forage for pollen and nectar.
The problem, a benchmark of computer science, poses the question, 鈥淕iven a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city and returns to the origin city?鈥�
This was the conundrum facing bumblebees let loose on an array of artificial flower feeding stations at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK.
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鈥淲e tempted the bees with shortcuts between feeding stations that increased the total distance they travelled to visit all the feeders,鈥� said at Queen Mary University of London, who led the research.
Initially, the bees fell into the trap, opting for short-term gain but ending up with a longer, more exhausting journey as they visited every flower in turn. Gradually, the insects refined their flight paths and found the most effective 鈥渢ravelling salesman鈥� solution. Instead of taking the obvious short cuts, they altered the order of their flower visits to reduce the overall travel distance.
Fast foraging
The team studied six bumblebees making 201 flights using a special type of radar capable of identifying signature reflections from tiny transponders attached to the insects.
鈥淲e tracked every single foraging flight that the bees undertook as they learned about the feeder array, with the radar telling us the position of the bee every three seconds, to an accuracy of two metres,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nimals cannot inspect a map to find out where the best food sources are or plan how to get to them; instead, they must explore the landscape, discovering locations one by one, and then they face the challenge of integrating their spatial memories into an efficient route.鈥�
Animated heat maps based on the radar tracks show how the bees adopted new flight paths and forgot others as their navigation improved. The findings could help in the development of artificial intelligence and advanced robots, the researchers said.
Understanding how pollinating insects search for food could also help reduce the threats posed by habitat loss and intensive farming. Pollination and other ecosystem services are estimated to be worth around 10 per cent of the value of global food production, or more than 拢150 billion.
at Rothamsted Research, said, 鈥淭he need to understand the movement of both migratory insect pests and pollinators is more important than ever if the current agricultural food production is going to feed a human population of 10 billion by 2050.鈥�
Scientific Reports
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