Visual Orientation in Honey Bees
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Many animals, from insects to human beings, can learn the                       locations of several important sites in the environment, such as                feeding places, watering holes, nests, shelters, or mating                      grounds.  For example, foraging honey bees, like many other                     insects, may range widely from their nest, traveling to any of                  several familiar flower patches as far away as 10 kilometers.                   Over such a distance, the flowers and the landmarks around them                 cannot be seen by a bee setting out, yet the bee can find its way               using familiar landmarks it sees at the starting point and along                the way.  Little is known about how bees learn landmarks on this                scale.  Equally remarkable, on returning home the bee can                       communicate the location of the food using the famous "dance                    language," a series of precise body movements observed by                       nestmates.  The dance language itself relies on the bee's ability               to learn about the landscape.  A dancer indicates the angle of                  its flight path relative to the sun's compass direction; on                     cloudy days the bee can determine the direction of the unseen sun               by referring to a memory, stored previously in sunny weather, of                its position relative to familiar landmarks. It is still a riddle               how bees form this memory in the first place, and how they update               it as they encounter new landmarks or as the sun changes its                    pattern of movement seasonally.                                                                                                                                 To study how bees use visual information stored in memory to                    perform these feats of orientation, Dr. Dyer will observe the                   responses of experienced bees when visual cues are altered in                   specific ways.  Such experiments can reveal which of many                       features of the environment (e.g., the size, shape, distance, and               color of landmarks, or the sun's position and rate of movement)                 provide spatial information to bees, how the relationships among                features are remembered, how memories develop over time, and what               happens to previously stored information when a bee encounters                  new information.  Thus, the goal is to uncover general processing               strategies underlying the use of visual spatial information for                 orientation.                                                                                                                                                    The visual orientation of a bee in a familiar environment is                    controlled by a brain little larger than the head of a pin.  The                larger brains of vertebrates, and especially of human beings, are               obviously capable of processing that is considerably more                       complex.  However, a difference in complexity does not                          necessarily imply that there is a dramatic difference in the                    basic neural processes.  A recurrent theme in biology, in fact,                 is that general principles can sometimes be more easily                         elucidated by studying simple organisms.  Hence, in addition to                 throwing light on how bees learn about their environment, these                 studies may help cognitive scientists refine their hypotheses                   regarding the mechanisms of spatial orientation in more complex                 organisms, including man.
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