Flying safely and avoiding obstacles in low light is crucial for the bumblebees that forage around dawn and dusk. Previous work has shown that bumblebees overcome the limitations of their visual system—typically adapted for bright sunlight—by increasing the time over which they sample photons. While this improves visual sensitivity, it decreases their capacity to resolve fast motion. This study investigates what effect this has on obstacle avoidance in flight, a task that requires the bees to reliably detect obstacles in the frontal visual field and to make a timely diversion to their flight path. In both bright and dim light, bumblebees avoided the 5 cm diameter obstacle at a consistent distance (22 cm) although in dim light they approached it more slowly from a distance of at least at least 80 cm. This suggests that bumblebees have an effective strategy for avoiding obstacles in all light conditions under which they are naturally active, and it is hypothesised that this is based on a time-to-contact prediction.

对于在黎明和黄昏时分觅食的大黄蜂而言，安全飞行和避开弱光障碍至关重要。以前的工作表明，大黄蜂通过增加对光子的采样时间来克服其视觉系统的局限性（通常适用于明亮的阳光）。虽然这可以提高视觉灵敏度，但会降低其解决快速运动的能力。这项研究调查了这对避免飞行中的障碍物有什么影响，这项任务要求蜜蜂可靠地探测到正面视野中的障碍物，并及时转移其飞行路径。在明亮和昏暗的灯光下，大黄蜂都以恒定的距离（22厘米）避开了直径为5厘米的障碍物，尽管在昏暗的灯光下，它们从至少80厘米的距离更缓慢地接近障碍物。