While foraging, animals continually collect information from their environment regarding the type, quality and distribution of their food sources. By using this information the forager can optimize its behavior Ð concentrate on better food sources and avoid the poor ones. In this study we investigated what factors are affecting the rate at which bumblebees can learn differences between two food sources and respond accordingly. A single forager was allowed to forage on 6 computer controlled artificial flowers. Each of the flowers was programmed to be refilled with 3.5 microliters of sugar water every 60 seconds. After performing about 150 visits, the refilling frequency of the flowers was changed so each 3 flowers (group A and B) was refilled in different rate. The bee was allowed to make 500 more visits and the proportion of the visits to the two groups recorded. Learning rate was estimated using a sigmoidal model of nonlinear regression. Using this paradigm, we test whether the color of the flowers (all blue, all yellow or group A yellow/group B blue) or the magnitude of the difference in the refilling rate (group A refills 7 or 14 times slower, or does not refill at all) can affect the learning rate of the bees. Our results show that during the first part of the experiment, when the two flower groups were refilled at the same rate, the bee visits each group at the same proportion. In the second part of the experiment, after the refilling frequency of the flowers had been changed, the proportion of visits for each group was changed as was expected. The learning rate however, was not affected by either of the tested factors, and was only significantly affected by the colony from which the bee came.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Bombus impatiens
Keywords: Foraging, Learning
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