Correction to 'Colour learning when foraging for nectar and pollen: bees learn two colours at once'.
نویسندگان
چکیده
Bees are model organisms for the study of learning and memory, yet nearly all such research to date has used a single reward, nectar. Many bees collect both nectar (carbohydrates) and pollen (protein) on a single foraging bout, sometimes from different plant species. We tested whether individual bumblebees could learn colour associations with nectar and pollen rewards simultaneously in a foraging scenario where one floral type offered only nectar and the other only pollen. We found that bees readily learned multiple reward-colour associations, and when presented with novel floral targets generalized to colours similar to those trained for each reward type. These results expand the ecological significance of work on bee learning and raise new questions regarding the cognitive ecology of pollination.
منابع مشابه
Colour learning when foraging for nectar and pollen: bees learn two colours at once
Bees are model organisms for the study of learning and memory, yet nearly all such research to date has used a single reward, nectar. Many bees collect both nectar (carbohydrates) and pollen (protein) on a single foraging bout, sometimes from different plant species. We tested whether individual bumblebees could learn colour associations with nectar and pollen rewards simultaneously in a foragi...
متن کامل‘X’ marks the spot: The possible benefits of nectar guides to bees and plants
1. Many floral displays are visually complex, transmitting multi-coloured patterns that are thought to direct pollinators to nectar rewards. These ‘nectar guides’ may be mutually beneficial, if they reduce pollinators’ handling time, leading to an increased visitation rate and promoting pollen transfer. Yet, many details regarding how floral patterns influence foraging efficiency are unknown, a...
متن کاملBees associate colour cues with differences in pollen rewards.
In contrast to the wealth of knowledge concerning sucrose-rewarded learning, the question of whether bees learn when they collect pollen from flowers has been little addressed. The nutritional value of pollen varies considerably between species, and it may be that bees learn the features of flowers that produce pollen best suited to the dietary requirements of their larvae. It is still unknown,...
متن کاملColour learning in two behavioural contexts: how much can a butterfly keep in mind?
Here we examine the ability of butterflies to learn colour cues in two different behavioural contexts, nectar foraging and oviposition, more or less simultaneously. We first trained female Battus philenor (Papilionidae) butterflies to associate a given colour with the presence of host plant leaf extract and assayed their colour preference; we then trained a subset of these butterflies to associ...
متن کاملObservational Conditioning in Flower Choice Copying by Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris): Influence of Observer Distance and Demonstrator Movement
BACKGROUND Bumblebees use information provided inadvertently by conspecifics when deciding between different flower foraging options. Such social learning might be explained by relatively simple associative learning mechanism: the bee may learn to associate conspecifics with nectar or pollen reward through previous experience of foraging jointly. However, in some studies, observers were guided ...
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عنوان ژورنال:
- Biology letters
دوره 11 10 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2015