Insects, equipped with complex compound eyes, can maintain a constant heading in their travels, some of them for thousands of miles. New research demonstrates that fruit flies keep their bearings by using the polarization pattern of natural skylight, bolstering the belief that many, if not all, insects have that capability, a University of Washington release states.
“If you go out in a field, lie on your back and look up at the sky, that's pretty much what an insect sees,” said Michael Dickinson, a University of Washington biology professor. “Insects have been looking up at this view forever.”
Dickinson is the senior author of a paper providing details on the findings, published Jan. 10 in the journal
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The researchers noted that insects such as monarch butterflies and locusts maintain a constant heading while migrating thousands of miles across continents.
To assess how insects orient themselves, Weir and Dickinson examined the behaviour of Drosophila melanogaster , a species commonly referred to as a fruit fly, in outdoor lighting conditions in a specially designed ‘arena' atop a building tall enough to be higher than treetops and other visual landmarks.
The researchers used a light-cured glue to attach the insects to a metal pin, which was then placed within a magnetic field that allowed the flies to move and rotate naturally but held them in place. Digital cameras tracked flight headings.
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During the hour before and the hour after sunset, the headings of flies relative to the position of the arena were recorded for 12 minutes. The arena was rotated 90 degrees every three minutes, and when natural light was not altered by optical filters some of the flies compensated for the rotations and maintained a consistent heading.
When the arena was covered with a circularly polarizing filter, eliminating natural linear polarization light patterns, the flies did not shift their heading significantly in response to arena rotations. — Our Bureau