Taking a semi-local dynamic snapshot as a possibility for local homing in initially naïve bumblebees

16 For central place foragers, such as bumblebees, it is essential to return reliably to their nest. Instead of 17 just flying away to forage, bumblebees, leaving their inconspicuous nest hole for the first time, need to 18 gather and learn sufficient information about the surroundings to allow them to return to the nest at the 19 end of their trip. Therefore, we assume an intrinsic learning program that manifests itself in the flight 20 structure immediately after leaving the nest for the first time. 21 In this study, we recorded and analysed the first outbound flight of individually marked naïve 22 bumblebees in an indoor environment. We found characteristic loop-like features in the flight pattern 23 that appear to be necessary for the bees to acquire environmental information and might be relevant for 24 finding the nest hole after a foraging trip. 25 Despite common features in their spatio-temporal organisation, the first departure flights from the nest 26 are characterised by a high level of variability in their loop-like flight structure across animals. Changes in 27 turn direction of body orientation, for example, are distributed evenly across the entire area used for the 28 flights without any systematic relation to the nest location. By considering the common flight motifs as 29 well as this variability, we came to the hypothesis, that a kind of dynamic snapshot is taken during the 30 early phase of departure flights in the close vicinity of the nest location. The quality of this snapshot is 31 hypothesised to be ‘tested’ during the later phases of the departure flights concerning its usefulness for 32 local homing. 33 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/178988 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Aug. 21, 2017;