The Flight Directionality of Bumblebees: Do They Remember Where They Came from?

Pollinators usually maintain directionality while moving through a flower patch, presumably to increase foraging success by minimizing revisitation of previously- emptied flowers. Two alternative directionality-generating mechanisms have been proposed: foragers may keep track of their arrival direction at a flower or cluster of flowers and prefer to depart in the same direction (the arrival hypothesis), or they may show little change in orientation while foraging at a flower or flower cluster and prefer to depart in the direction they are last facing (the last-faced hypothesis). Rotation of a flower or inflorescence while the forager is feeding on it will unequivocally distinguish the two hypotheses