Data from: Follow the flower: Approach-flight behaviour of bumblebees landing on a moving target

While landing on flowers, pollinating insects often have to deal with
flower movement caused by wind. Here, we determined the landing
performance of bumblebees on a moving artificial flower, and how they use
their visual-motor system to control their landings. To do this, we built
an experimental setup containing a physical model of a flower, moving
sideways using sinusoidal kinematics at various oscillation frequencies
(up to 0.65 Hz, at constant amplitude of 5 cm). We filmed the landings of
Bombus terrestris bumblebees on this moving flower model and extracted the
flight kinematics and trajectories using deep neural network-based
videography tracking. The bumblebees were capable of compensating for the
detrimental effects of flower movement on landing performance for flower
frequencies up to 0.53 Hz. Only at our maximum frequency of 0.65 Hz, the
percentage of successful landings decreased, but landing accuracy and
duration were not affected. To successfully land on the moving flower, the
bumblebees gradually slowed down, aimed towards the middle of the flower
and aligned with its movement. Our results indicated that bumblebees use
modular visual-motor control feedback to do this: (1) they slow down by
maintaining an approximately constant average optic expansion of the
approaching flower image; (2) they aim towards the flower by keeping the
flower in the middle of their view;  (3) they align to the flower
movement by minimizing the sideways optic flow of the moving flower image.
Our findings increase our understanding of how flying insects land on
flowers moved by wind.