Bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy

Chittka, Lars; Dyer, Adrian G.; Bock, Fiola; Dornhaus, Anna

doi:10.1038/424388a

Cited by 353 publications

(315 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…They found the effect on time to be less immediate with two informed individuals (25% of the group informed) being required to bring about a significant decrease in the time taken to reach the circle periphery. Interestingly, found no evidence of a tradeoff between the speed and accuracy of decision making as has been found from previous work on humans (Edwards 1965;Vitevitch 2002), ants (Franks et al 2002(Franks et al , 2003(Franks et al , 2009), monkeys (Roitman & Shadlen 2002) and bees (Chittka et al 2003). also tested scenarios where a conflict (different numbers of informed individuals were instructed to reach targets 1808 apart) was introduced in the preferences of informed individuals, finding that the direction of group motion was almost always decided by the majority.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans

Dyer

Johansson

Helbing

et al. 2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

340

208

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This paper reviews the literature on leadership in vertebrate groups, including recent work on human groups, before presenting the results of three new experiments looking at leadership and decision making in small and large human groups. In experiment 1, we find that both group size and the presence of uninformed individuals can affect the speed with which small human groups (eight people) decide between two opposing directional preferences and the likelihood of the group splitting. In experiment 2, we show that the spatial positioning of informed individuals within small human groups (10 people) can affect the speed and accuracy of group motion. We find that having a mixture of leaders positioned in the centre and on the edge of a group increases the speed and accuracy with which the group reaches their target. In experiment 3, we use large human crowds (100 and 200 people) to demonstrate that the trends observed from earlier work using small human groups can be applied to larger crowds. We find that only a small minority of informed individuals is needed to guide a large uninformed group. These studies build upon important theoretical and empirical work on leadership and decision making in animal groups.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans

Dyer

Johansson

Helbing

et al. 2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

340

208

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“…Bumble-bees experience speed-accuracy trade-off while foraging for nectar under laboratory conditions (Chittka et al 2003;Dyer & Chittka 2004). If the multimodal signals provide decision-making benefits, we expect that bees foraging on flowers that differ in two modalities will make faster and/or more accurate decisions than bees foraging on flowers that differ in one modality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many cases, animals can change the amount of time they allocate to making a decision depending on context, thus also changing their accuracy and their position on the speed-accuracy tradeoff line. For example, if accuracy is favoured over speed, ants reduce the speed of their decisions ( Franks et al 2003), and if errors are costly, bumble-bees invest more time in making a decision (Chittka et al 2003). This dependence on context and task difficulty makes it crucial to analyse both the speed and the accuracy of decisions when addressing whether adding another modality to a signal improves signal detection and/or processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A negative correlation between accuracy and speed of decisions, known as the speed-accuracy trade-off, was first shown in humans (Garrett 1922). Recently, several studies have documented that animals, including bumble-bees (Chittka et al 2003), honeybees (Passino & Seeley 2006), ants ( Franks et al 2003), rats (Uchida & Mainen 2003;Uchida et al 2006) and mice (Abraham et al 2004;Rinberg et al 2006;Slotnick 2007), experience the same trade-off. For example, when forced to make swift decisions between similar odours, mice become less accurate (Uchida & Mainen 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multimodal signals enhance decision making in foraging bumble-bees

2008

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Multimodal signals are common in nature and have recently attracted considerable attention. Despite this interest, their function is not well understood. We test the hypothesis that multimodal signals improve decision making in receivers by influencing the speed and the accuracy of their decisions. We trained bumble-bees (Bombus impatiens) to discriminate between artificial flowers that differed either in one modality, visual (specifically, shape) or olfactory, or in two modalities, visual plus olfactory. Bees trained on multimodal flowers learned the rewarding flowers faster than those trained on flowers that differed only in the visual modality and, in extinction trials, visited the previously rewarded flowers at a higher rate than bees trained on unimodal flowers. Overall, bees showed a speed-accuracy trade-off; bees that made slower decisions achieved higher accuracy levels. Foraging on multimodal flowers did not affect the slope of the speed-accuracy relationship, but resulted in a higher intercept, indicating that multimodal signals were associated with consistently higher accuracy across range of decision speeds. Our results suggest that bees make more effective decisions when flowers signal in more than one modality, and confirm the importance of studying signal components together rather than separately.

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“…On the other hand the mechanism involved in selecting the amount of water in the substrate within a small spatial and temporal scale may be associated with individual cognitive skills. Bees have a system of decision making in which the accuracy of the choice depends on the time of resource assessment (Chittka et al 2003). In general, this assessment and learning process is quick (Real 1991).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Removal of clay by stingless bees: load size and moisture selection

Costa‐Pereira

2014

An. Acad. Bras. Ciênc.

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Some organisms disperse energy, associated with the transportation of resource, which is not necessarily food. Stingless bees of Central Amazonia (Melipona flavolineata and M. lateralis) collect clay in banks along streams for nest building. The moisture of the clay varies along the bank, and bees collect clay from specific location, indicating that there is some sort of preference regarding their selection. This study aims at identifying: if larger bees carry more clay; if there is a preference for moisture of substrates; and if bees are less efficient accumulating and transporting clay when it is wet. In order to do so, I measured the size of the bees and of the pellets of clay found in the corbicula. I set up a field experiment to test substrate preferences. The amount of clay transported, increased exponentially in accordance to the size of the bee, and the preferred substrate was the driest clay. The amount and the efficiency of removal of clay were not affected by the moisture of the substrate. Despite the wet clay being denser, it does not reduce the efficiency of exploitation of the resource, but suggests that bees spend more energy to carry the same quantity of wet clay, which may be the underlying mechanism explaining their preference for removing drier clay.

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Bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy

Cited by 353 publications

References 7 publications

Leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans

Leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans

Multimodal signals enhance decision making in foraging bumble-bees

Removal of clay by stingless bees: load size and moisture selection

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