Spontaneous flower constancy and learning in honey bees as a function of colour

Hill, Peggy S. M.; Wells, Patrick H.; Wells, Harrington

doi:10.1006/anbe.1996.0467

Cited by 125 publications

(147 citation statements)

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“…Flight directionality may be influenced by environmental characteristics, such as resource availability and spatial distribution, wind direction, resource quantity collected in each visited flower, and intrinsic factors of each species foraging behavior (Pyke, 1978;Zimmerman, 1979Zimmerman, , 1982bWaddington, 1980;Krebs & McCleery, 1984;Schimd-Hempel, 1984, 1985Ginsberg, 1986;Stephens & Krebs, 1986;Hill et al, 1997).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This behavior can be modified according to the rewards found in the current flower, resource distribution and variability, intrinsic factors as metabolic requirements or other factors (Heinrich, 1981;Schmitt, 1983a,b;Waser, 1982;Galen & Plowright, 1985;Ginsberg, 1986;Hill, et al, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pyke, 1978;Wells & Wells, 1986;Zimmerman, 1979Zimmerman, , 1982bHill et al, 1997;Rasheed & Harder, 1997). The foraging behavior of tropical solitary bee species has been neglected, in spite of their great diversity (Roubik, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Foraging behavior of bee pollinators on the tropical weed Triumfetta semitriloba: flight distance and directionality

2000

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We studied flight distance and directionality of bee pollinators on the tropical shrub weed Triumfetta semitriloba Jacq. (Tiliaceae), addressing (1) within-and between-plant movement pattern; (2) distances flown between plants; (3) flight directionality. Flowering plants were distributed in well-delimited clumps, in each of two pasture areas (A1 and A2) and one area of forest gap (A3), in Viçosa, southeastern Brazil. Five solitary bee species, Augochlorella michaelis, Augochloropsis cupreola, Pseudocentron paulistana, Ceratinula sp., Melissodes sexcincta, and two social bee, Plebeia droryana, P. cf. nigriceps were observed. All species moved mainly to the nearest flower on the same individual plant and, in between-plant movements, to the first or second nearest neighbor. All species moved non-randomly, presenting a flight directionality in departures (maintenance of flight direction), but with a high frequency of turn angles. It is suggested that this foraging behavior pattern occurred because of the resource quantity and quality (pollen or nectar), and environmental characteristics such as flower density and resource distribution.Key words: foraging behaviour, directionality, pollination, flight distance, solitary bees. RESUMO Comportamento de forrageamento das abelhas polinizadoras da planta invasoraTriumfetta semitriloba: distância de vôo e direcionalidade Estudamos a distância de vôo e a direcionalidade de abelhas polinizadoras da planta invasora Triumfetta semitriloba Jacq. (Tiliaceae), sobre os seguintes aspectos: (1) padrão de movimentação dentro e entre plantas; (2) distância de vôo entre plantas; (3) direcionalidade de vôo. As plantas floridas eram distribuídas em manchas bem delimitadas, em duas áreas de pasto (A1 e A2) e uma área de clareira de mata (A3), em Viçosa, MG, Sudeste do Brasil. Foram observadas cinco espécies de abelhas solitárias, Augochlorella michaelis, Augochloropsis cupreola, Pseudocentron paulistana, Ceratinula sp., Melissodes sexcincta e duas espécies sociais, Plebeia droryana, P. cf. nigriceps. Todas as espécies moveram principalmente para a flor mais próxima, dentro da mesma planta e, nos movimentos entre plantas, para o primeiro ou segundo vizinho mais próximo. Todas as espécies apresentaram uma direcionalidade no padrão de vôo, ou seja, uma movimentação não aleatória, mas com uma alta freqüência de ângulos laterais. Sugere-se que esse padrão de comportamento de forrageamento ocorreu devido à qualidade e quantidade de recurso (pólen ou néctar) e às características ambientais como a densidade de flores e distribuição do recurso nas manchas.Palavras-chave: comportamento de forrageamento, direcionalidade, polinização, distância de vôo, abelhas solitárias.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Foraging behavior of bee pollinators on the tropical weed Triumfetta semitriloba: flight distance and directionality

2000

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“…It is well known that honeybees tend to forage on one particular species of flower at a time ("flower constancy"; see, e.g., Free, 1963;Hill, Wells, & Wells, 1997) and color is thought to be one ofthe primary cues that bees use to discriminate among flower species (e.g., Winston, 1987). Thus, perseveration to colors may be related to flowerconstancy (Ohyama et al, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working memory for color in honeybees

Brown

Mckeon

Curley

et al. 1998

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Honeybees were tested in delayed conditional discrimination procedures (matching-to-sample and nonmatching-to-sample), using color stimuli presented on a video monitor. A small but reliable tendency to choose the color presented as the conditional cue was found, regardless of whether the contingencies reinforced or discouraged this tendency, The perseverative tendency occurred even with a delay of up to 1-2 min between the conditional cue and the choice. The tendency cannot be explained by changes in the associative value of the colors. Explanation of the results requires some form of working memory for color.Many vertebrate species have been shown to exhibit the flexible, dynamic form ofshort-term memory that is often termed working memory. Working memory is typically thought of as holding discreet items of information, usually for relatively short periods of time (see, e.g., Honig, 1978). Two particularly well-studied examples are the memory for form or color stimuli exhibited by pigeons in the matching-to-sample paradigm (e.g., Roberts & Grant, 1974) and the memory for spatial locations exhibited by rats in the radial-arm maze (Olton & Samuelson, 1976). Brown and Demas (1994;Demas & Brown, 1995) recently presented evidence for spatial working memory in honeybees. Their procedure was designed to be an analogue ofthe rat radial-arm maze procedure. They reported a small but reliable tendency for bees to avoid revisits to locations recently depleted of food, just as rats display a very robust tendency to avoid revisits to locations recently depleted of food. Brown, Moore, Brown, and Langheld (1997) replicated and extended these results under a variety of experimental conditions. In contrast, Burmeister, Couvillon, and Bitterman (1995) failed to find evidence that spatial choices were controlled by the identity of previous spatial choices. More recently, Isnec, Couvillon, and Bitterman (1997) reported four experiments in which bees' spatial choices were controlled by the identity of previous choices. However, rather than the "winshift" (alternation) tendency found in our laboratory, this control was expressed as the opposite "win-stay" (perseverative) tendency in Isnec et ai.'s subjects. Demas and Brown (1995) reported that bees are predisposed to alternate among reinforced spatial locations but could learn to perseverate under the appropriate reinforcement contingencies. In contrast, Isnec et al.s subjects exhibited perseveration regardless of the contingencies. Although the explanation for the discrepancies in the manner in which previous visits affect subsequent choices is unclear, there is agreement that the results of these experiments require a memory system that allows discrimination oflocations previously visited within a trial from those not yet visited (Bitterman, 1996; Brown et aI., 1997; Isnec et aI., 1997).The existence of working memory in honeybees is of interest because of the vast differences between the structure of the honeybee's nervous system and those of the vertebrates in which working mem...

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“…Self-organization of bees is based on a few relatively simple rules of individual insect behavior [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. In spite of the existence of a large number of different social insect species, and variation in their behavioral patterns, it is possible to describe individual insects' behavior as follows [26]: Each bee decides to reach the nectar source by following a nestmate who has already discovered a patch of flowers.…”

Section: What Is Swarm Intelligence?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transport modeling by multi-agent systems: a swarm intelligence approach

Teodorovic

2003

Transportation Planning and Technology

127

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There are a number of emergent traffic and transportation phenomena that cannot be analyzed successfully and explained using analytical models. The only way to analyze such phenomena is through the development of models that can simulate behavior of every agent. Agent-based modeling is an approach based on the idea that a system is composed of decentralized individual 'agents' and that each agent interacts with other agents according to localized knowledge. The agent-based approach is a 'bottom-up' approach to modeling where special kinds of artificial agents are created by analogy with social insects. Social insects (including bees, wasps, ants and termites) have lived on Earth for millions of years. Their behavior in nature is primarily characterized by autonomy, distributed functioning and self-organizing capacities. Social insect colonies teach us that very simple individual organisms can form systems capable of performing highly complex tasks by dynamically interacting with each other. On the other hand, a large number of traditional engineering models and algorithms are based on control and centralization. In this article, we try to obtain the answer to the following question: Can we use some principles of natural swarm intelligence in the development of artificial systems aimed at solving complex problems in traffic and transportation?

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Spontaneous flower constancy and learning in honey bees as a function of colour

Cited by 125 publications

References 42 publications

Foraging behavior of bee pollinators on the tropical weed Triumfetta semitriloba: flight distance and directionality

Foraging behavior of bee pollinators on the tropical weed Triumfetta semitriloba: flight distance and directionality

Working memory for color in honeybees

Transport modeling by multi-agent systems: a swarm intelligence approach

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