Nocturnal bees

نویسنده

  • Eric J. Warrant
چکیده

Are there really nocturnal bees? Surprisingly, yes. Most people, if asked about bees, think of those industrious dayactive species, like the common honeybee, that harvest sunny meadows of flowers for pollen and nectar. And such images are not misguided — most bees are indeed day active (diurnal). By sundown most bees are safely back in the nest, their day’s labours complete. But for some bees, the setting sun instead signals the beginning of a working night. For these nocturnal shiftworkers, the gathering of pollen and nectar can occur in near-darkness. Some species forage all night, and these are thus obligately nocturnal. One species, a giant Indian carpenter bee of the genus Xylocopa (which remains to be identified), even continues to forage on the darkest moonless nights. Others are crepuscular, meaning that their activity is restricted to the slightly brighter hour (or so) just after sunset and/or before sunrise. Some of these bees may even continue to forage all night if the sky is moonlit. The dim worlds experienced by all of these night-flying bees are actually quite challenging — bees rely heavily on vision during foraging, and recent research shows that nocturnal bees are no exception.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Nocturnal Vision and Landmark Orientation in a Tropical Halictid Bee

BACKGROUND Some bees and wasps have evolved nocturnal behavior, presumably to exploit night-flowering plants or avoid predators. Like their day-active relatives, they have apposition compound eyes, a design usually found in diurnal insects. The insensitive optics of apposition eyes are not well suited for nocturnal vision. How well then do nocturnal bees and wasps see? What optical and neural a...

متن کامل

Nocturnal Vision: Bees in the Dark

Some eyes work better in the dark than others. The apposition type of compound eye that bees and other diurnal insects possess is usually of little use after nightfall. Nevertheless some tropical sweat bees have pushed the limits of this unfavourable design so far that they can navigate using landmarks that are too dim for humans to make out.

متن کامل

Columbines

Can nocturnal bees really see so well with such tiny eyes? Remarkably yes. But there is no question that their visual systems are operating near the limit and that only the coarser and slower features of the world can be seen. Light intensity plays a deciding role in whether a particular bee species is able to forage or not — many species of bees that are capable of visual foraging in the early...

متن کامل

Seeing in the dark: vision and visual behaviour in nocturnal bees and wasps.

In response to the pressures of predation, parasitism and competition for limited resources, several groups of (mainly) tropical bees and wasps have independently evolved a nocturnal lifestyle. Like their day-active (diurnal) relatives, these insects possess apposition compound eyes, a relatively light-insensitive eye design that is best suited to vision in bright light. Despite this, nocturnal...

متن کامل

Nocturnal bees learn landmark colours in starlight

Honeybees, like humans and most other vertebrates, are colour-blind in dim light. Bees are primarily day-active and have apposition compound eyes, the typical eye design of diurnal insects. Most bees are trichromats with photoreceptors sensitive in the UV, blue and green [1]. While their diurnal colour vision was established almost 100 years ago, honeybees are known to be colour-blind in moonli...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Current Biology

دوره 17  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007