Interindividual variation in the use of social information during learning in honeybees

Tait, C. Drew; Naug, Dhruba

doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.2501

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 51 publications

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“…Moreover, space is shared not only with individuals of the same species, but also with other species, some of which may be targeting similar resources. Because individuals compete or learn from other individuals, they may thus alter their movement based on conspecific (Sassi et al, in press) or heterospecific (Havmøller et al, 2021) movements. Furthermore, the direct or indirect interaction between individuals is likely to shape the selection on their cognition too (Ashton et al, 2020; Robira & Perez-Lamarque, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of cognition and movement of seed-dispersing animals in shaping plant distributions

Robira

2023

Preprint

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In the wild, an evolutionary play takes place in an unchanging setting, or so current hypotheses on the evolution of spatiotemporal cognition of animals implicitly assume. However, if plant-eating vagile animals are likely to have their spatiotemporal cognition shaped by the distribution of plant resources, their movement may shape the way resources are distributed as well, for example by dispersing seeds. Using an agent-based model simulating the foraging behaviour of a seed disperser endowed with spatiotemporal knowledge of resource distribution, I investigated whether resource spatiotemporal patterns could be influenced by the level of cognition involved in foraging. This level of cognition represented how well resource location and phenology were predicted by the agent. I showed that seed dispersers could shape the long-term distribution of resources by materialising the routes repeatedly used by the forager with the newly recruited trees. This stemmed from the conjunction of two forces: competition for space between trees and a seed-dispersing forager moving from tree to tree based on spatiotemporal memory. In turn, resource landscape modifications affected the benefits of spatiotemporal memory, hence the selection gradient that applies to cognition. This could create eco-evolutionary feedback loops between animal spatiotemporal cognition and the distribution patterns of plant resources. Altogether, the results emphasise that foraging cognition is a cause and a consequence of resource heterogeneity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of cognition and movement of seed-dispersing animals in shaping plant distributions

Robira

2023

Preprint

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No evidence that recruitment pheromone modulates olfactory, visual, or spatial learning in the ant Lasius niger

Koch,

Kabas,

Czaczkes

2024

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Pheromones are perhaps the most common form of intraspecific communication in the animal kingdom and used in various contexts. Their modulatory potential on cognitive processes has been demonstrated in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Particularly interesting in this regard are social insects, due to their extensive use of pheromones to organise collective behaviour. Recruitment pheromones might be expected to encourage learning, but could also hinder learning due to a blocking effect, whereby the pheromone already partially predicts the reward, hindering further cues being associated with the reward. Here, we use free-running learning assays using realistic pheromone strength to test for a modulation effect on learning in the black garden ant Lasius niger. We found no evidence that learning in three modalities (olfactory, visual, and spatial) is affected by the presence of a realistic pheromone trail. Interestingly, this is in contrast to findings in honeybees. The fact that associative learning does not seem to be influenced by recruitment pheromone in L. niger and reportedly the Argentine ant, while it is in honeybees, the possibly best-studied social insect species, is noteworthy. We speculate that a species-specific importance of social information use could drive modulatory effects of pheromones on a wide range of cognitive processes. Significance statement Pheromones have been shown to modulate associative learning in a variety of animals. Among social insects, attractive pheromone has been found to enhance associative olfactory learning in honeybees but not in ants. In ants, recruitment pheromone predicts a food source; therefore, it might hinder learning of a new cue for a food reward. We use a free-running learning assay to test for an effect of trail pheromone on associative learning in three different modalities—olfactory, spatial, visual—in Lasius niger, but find no evidence of any effect. Our learning assay demonstrated fast olfactory learning, moderate spatial learning, and no visual learning after only one training visit. Based on our findings, and findings in two other ant species, we speculate that the ecological foraging conditions of mass-recruiting ants, i.e. following a trail, have not favoured a modulation potential of recruitment pheromone opposed to attractive pheromone in honeybees.

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Interindividual variation in the use of social information during learning in honeybees

Tait

Naug

2022

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Slow–fast differences in cognition among individuals have been proposed to be an outcome of the speed–accuracy trade-off in decision-making. Based on the different costs associated with acquiring information via individual and social learning, we hypothesized that slow–fast cognitive differences would also be tied to the adoption of these different learning modes. Since foragers in honeybee colonies likely have both these information acquisition modes available to them, we chose to test them for interindividual differences in individual and social learning. By measuring performance on a learning task with and without a social cue and quantifying learning rate and maximum accuracy in these two tasks, our results show the existence of a speed–accuracy trade-off in both the individual and the social learning contexts. However, the trade-off is steeper during individual learning, which was slower than social learning but led to higher accuracy. Most importantly, our results also show that bees that attained high accuracy on the individual learning task had low accuracy on the social learning task and vice versa . We discuss how these two information acquisition strategies tie to slow–fast differences in cognitive phenotypes and how they might contribute to division of labour and social behaviour.

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Interindividual variation in the use of social information during learning in honeybees

Cited by 3 publications

References 51 publications

The role of cognition and movement of seed-dispersing animals in shaping plant distributions

The role of cognition and movement of seed-dispersing animals in shaping plant distributions

No evidence that recruitment pheromone modulates olfactory, visual, or spatial learning in the ant Lasius niger

Interindividual variation in the use of social information during learning in honeybees

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