Innate floral object identification in a solitary pollinator employs a combination of both visual and olfactory cues

Abstract

Object identification is fundamental to animal behaviour and identifying nutritive objects is key for survival. Solitary insects emerging far from food sources and without access to social learning must therefore employ innate identification of food cues to locate relevant nutritive objects from a distance. Such innate preferences for food cues should be both specific enough to allow discrimination between food and non-food objects and general enough to allow for the variety of food objects relevant to the insect species. Here, we examined innate floral object identification behaviour in solitary generalist insect pollinator Eristalinus aeneus using an artificial floral object with both visual and olfactory cues previously found to be attractive to several hoverfly species across multiple environments. We used a subtractive two choice assay to present flower-naïve E. aeneus with a choice between this object and a similar object that differed in either a single visual or olfactory cue. We found that innate floral choices of the hoverfly E. aeneus are a product of broad, plant-based olfactory cues and visual cues, where a combination of radial symmetry and reflectance in the 300–400 nm and 500–700 nm wavelength range was particularly important for innate floral object preference. Our study, therefore, shows how solitary animals without prior experience can efficiently employ multimodal cues to identify multiple relevant nutritive objects.