Streetwise bees cut corners to find food

Date:
December 8, 2021
Source:
University of Exeter
Summary:
Bumblebees waste no time enjoying the beauty of flowers -- instead
learning the bare minimum about where to land and find food,
new research shows.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Bumblebees waste no time enjoying the beauty of flowers -- instead
learning the bare minimum about where to land and find food, new
research shows.


==========================================================================
A team led by the University of Exeter presented bees with artificial
flowers - - circles of blue or yellow, or half and half, with sugar
solution in the centre.

The artificial flowers were positioned upright, and the flight pattern
of bees meant they mostly saw the bottom half of the circles as they
came in to land.

When faced with a test circle that had a different arrangement of the two colours, bees paid most attention to whatever colour had appeared in the
lower half of the artificial flower they were used to -- suggesting they learned just this basic information rather than inspecting and memorising
the whole flower prior to landing.

"We know bees have the cognitive capacity to learn a lot of information
about a flower," said Professor Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, Associate
Professor at Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.

"However, our study suggests a simple, low-effort form of learning is
good enough in some situations.



========================================================================== First author Dr Keri Langridge, also from the University of Exeter, said:
"The bees in our experiments extracted just the information they needed,
rather than learning everything that was available to them.

"Like humans, most animals like easy forms of learning.

"Why learn a hidden route to the top of the hill when one could simply
follow a trail with a big colour sign?" The research team, including researchers from the universities of Durham and Auckland, presented bees
with various versions of the foraging training and tasks.

Some bees were trained with a circle split into two uneven colour parts
- - either mostly yellow or mostly blue, which changed their flight
patterns.

The test results in this case were more complex than after learning
circles that were split 50/50, suggesting the bees had paid some attention
to contrast edges as well as colour during training flights.

While sugar solution was provided in the training flights, no reward
was given in the test flights that followed the training. The bees were therefore unable to locate the sugar during test flights, so they flew
around in front of the test circle -- allowing the researchers to see
which colour they were drawn to.

Professor Hempel de Ibarra said the study's findings may provide
insights about the evolution of flowers, whose colourful patterns can
help pollinators such as bees to quickly and safely land.

The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Exeter. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Keri V. Langridge, Claudia Wilke, Olena Riabinina, Misha Vorobyev,
Natalie Hempel de Ibarra. Approach Direction Prior to Landing
Explains Patterns of Colour Learning in Bees. Frontiers in
Physiology, 2021; 12 DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2021.697886 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211208090059.htm

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