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Bees and the travelling salesman problem: how tiny brains solve complex cognitive tasks

Reference	BB/F52765X/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Lars Chittka
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Steven Le Comber, Professor Nigel Raine
Institution	Queen Mary University of London
Department	Sch of Biological and Chemical Sciences
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	372,745
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	26/06/2007
End date	25/11/2010
Duration	41 months

Abstract

unavailable

Summary

Traffic clogged roads, congested mobile phone networks ¿ supercomputers running day and night to find the best route for cars and information. But we know that they don¿t always get it right, despite being very powerful. Bees have to find routes between flowers every day when finding food, and without computer help. How do they choose which flowers to visit, and in what order? Bees don¿t just have to visit flowers, they have to remember which have the most nectar, and visit them without wasting energy flying the long way round. Their route may not be perfect, but we hope it will help us find good routes through complex networks more easily. We will look at how bees remember which flowers are good to visit from day-to-day, and how it learns the location of flowers and best order to visit them. We will also look at whether they always visit flowers in the same order they discovered them, and how landmarks help them to retrace their steps. Finally, we will look at how bees cope when the amount of nectar in flowers changes, or there are other bees feeding from the same flowers.

Committee	Closed Committee - Animal Sciences (AS)
Research Topics	Neuroscience and Behaviour
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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