INSPIRATION FROM THE LAND OF MIKE IN THE LAND OF OZ: Toward a unified understanding of pursuit, motion camouflage and mid-air collision avoidance in flying insects

The seminal studies of Land and Collett on chasing behaviour in houseflies have inspired investigation of a number of related phenomena in flying insects. Olberg’s laboratory has shown that dragonflies intercept a moving target by using an efficient, predictive strategy. Our laboratory has suggested that hoverflies and dragonflies might ‘shadow’ conspecifics by moving in such a way as to conceal their own motion. Our studies of the pursuit of moving targets by aggressive honeybees reveal phases of shadowing behaviour, as well as phases of predictive interception. In all of these instances, one of the insects bears a constant absolute bearing relative to the other. Thus, by moving along a constant-bearing trajectory, an insect can (a) intercept another moving insect efficiently or (b) shadow another insect by concealing its own motion. As a corollary of (b), we would expect that two bees will collide with each other if they move along trajectories in which they hold a constant absolute bearing, because then the motion of each bee will be camouflaged and not be detected by the other bee. Our experiments reveal that this is precisely the condition under which mid-air collisions occur.