Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Bumblebees Appear to Equate Marginal Costs and Marginal Benefits
Bumblebees "make a clear trade-off between minimizing travel distance and prioritizing high rewards":
How bumblebees tackle the traveling salesman problem, EurekAlert: It is a mathematical puzzle which has vexed academics and travelling salesmen alike, but new research from Queen Mary, University of London's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, reveals how bumblebees effectively plan their route between the most rewarding flowers while travelling the shortest distances.
The research, led by Dr Mathieu Lihoreau and published in the British Ecological Society's Functional Ecology, explored the movement of bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, as they collected nectar from five artificial flowers varying in reward value.
"Animals which forage on resources that are fixed in space and replenish over time, such as flowers which refill with nectar, often visit these resources in repeatable sequences called trap-lines," said Dr Lihoreau, "While trap-lining is a common foraging strategy found in bees, birds and primates we still know very little about how animals attempt to optimize the routes they travel."READ FULL POST HERE
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