| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,550,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,050,000)
Fiscal Year 2009: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
Fiscal Year 2008: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥600,000)
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| Research Abstract |
In this study, flight behavior of honeybee to various kinds of sensory stimuli was experimented and analyzed. It is expected to provide new insight into construct a mathematical model for flight control mechanism of the flight insect. We are developed a new experimental setup and protocol to measure the flight properties under the free and thethered flight conditions stimulating with visual, auditory and olfactory stimuli. In the thethered experiments by our flight simulator, it was shown that shape and color information has a different positional universality in the honeybee vision. It was also shown that rhythmic sounds caused by the waggle dance in the honeybee colony tended to make orientation to the sound source even under the flight. Furthermore, using a wind tunnel, in which the airflow and wind direction were stabilized, we recorded flying bees with a video camera to analyze the flight area, velocity, angular velocity and direction. Bees were trained with an artificial feeder with an odor in the center of wind tunnel. After the feeder was removed, the flight behavior was compared under the condition with or without the olfactory stimulus, given from a glass pipe, located upwind from the feeder place. In this experiment, the results shown that velocity, angular velocity and direction were different between the inside and the outside of the odor area. Flight trajectories tend to be bent or curve in the just outside of the odor range. Two type of behavioral control process, recalling memory place and acquiring external sensory signal, were existed and switched to make variation of individual flight properties. The variability of behaviors could be important to adapt to the environmental changes.
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