Bee cognition

Bumblebees attend to both the properties of the string and the target in string-pulling tasks, but prioritize the features of the string

Previous studies have demonstrated that associative learning and experience play important roles in the string-pulling of bumblebees (Bombus terrestris). However, the features of the target (artificial flower with sugar reward) and the string that bees learn in such tasks remain unknown. This study aimed to explore the specific aspects of the string-flower arrangement that bumblebees learn and how they prioritize these features. We show that bumblebees trained with string-pulling are sensitive to the flower stimuli; they exhibit a preference for pulling strings connected to flowers over strings that are not attached to a target. Additionally, they chose to pull strings attached to flowers of the same color and shape as experienced during training. The string feature also plays a crucial role for bumblebees when the flower features are identical. Furthermore, bees prioritized the features of the strings rather than the flowers when both cues were in conflict. Our results show that bumblebees solve string-pulling tasks by acquiring knowledge about the characteristics of both targets and strings, and contribute to a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes employed by bees when tackling non-natural skills.

Group size and labour demands determine division of labour as a consequence of demographic stochasticity

Division of labour (DoL) is most prominently observed in eusocial insects but also occurs in much smaller cooperative groups where all individuals could potentially perform any task. In such groups, previous experience and learning are the most important mechanisms underlying specialization. Using behavioural simulations, we investigate the dynamics of task specialization in groups of various sizes and with different constraints on the choice of task. We assume that individuals choose tasks by weighing their own competence to perform a task against the group requirement of how much that task needs to be performed. We find that task specialization occurs even if individuals choose tasks based solely on the group's needs rather than their own competence. As large groups are less affected by demographic stochasticity, they can more accurately distribute labour across tasks, and individuals become more effective due to a reduced need to switch between tasks. This effect is enhanced if groups must perform a larger number of tasks. However, from an evolutionary point of view, individuals in larger groups develop a greater responsiveness to group requirements than those in small groups when labour variation carries a fitness penalty and thus will more readily switch between tasks. Small groups thus seem less able to distribute labour optimally over tasks through increased switching, and therefore evolve to ignore task imbalances up to a higher level before the threshold to switch between tasks is crossed. Further, we find that selection on learning ability is stronger in small than in large groups. We conclude that the reason why DoL may emerge more readily in large groups might not be due to a group-size effect on optimal decision-making, but rather because of a lower degree of variation of the labour distribution as a consequence of demographic stochasticity.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.

A Global Survey on the Perception of Conservationists Regarding Animal Consciousness

Human perceptions of animal consciousness have evolved over time, influencing how they are treated. This study aimed to assess perceptions of animal consciousness in people working in conservation. An online survey of 87 participants evaluated their perceptions of animals' capabilities across 10 dimensions of consciousness, including self-consciousness, learning, and reasoning. The sum of the answers to the questions was validated as a "perception index" using a principal component analysis. Next, its variation according to taxonomic, demographic, professional factors, and the duration, type, and frequency of interaction with animals was assessed with generalized linear models and stepwise model selection. Participants' perceptions varied with taxonomic class and the level of education, with mammals obtaining higher indexes than birds (-0.14; 95% confidence interval [CI] -0.24, -0.03, p < 0.01) or reptiles (-0.41; 95% CI -0.55, -0.27, p < 0.01), and respondents holding a PhD exhibiting higher perception indexes than those with BScs (-0.19; 95% CI -0.32, -0.06, p < 0.01) or lower education (-0.18; 95% CI -0.32, -0.03, p = 0.01). The attribution of consciousness followed a phylogenetic pattern, but several exceptions (e.g., the octopus and raven) were noted on a finer scale supporting a multifactorial influence on the perception of animal consciousness that emerges upon a baseline phylogenetic pattern. Finally, the results suggest that conservationists are influenced by culture and scientific knowledge, as much as their personal experiences, when evaluating animals' perceptions, highlighting the need for further research on the convergence between perception, belief, and evidence.

How can we apply decision-making theories to wild animal behavior? Predictions arising from dual process theory and Bayesian decision theory

Our understanding of decision-making processes and cognitive biases is ever increasing, thanks to an accumulation of testable models and a large body of research over the last several decades. The vast majority of this work has been done in humans and laboratory animals because these study subjects and situations allow for tightly controlled experiments. However, it raises questions about how this knowledge can be applied to wild animals in their complex environments. Here, we review two prominent decision-making theories, dual process theory and Bayesian decision theory, to assess the similarities in these approaches and consider how they may apply to wild animals living in heterogenous environments within complicated social groupings. In particular, we wanted to assess when wild animals are likely to respond to a situation with a quick heuristic decision and when they are likely to spend more time and energy on the decision-making process. Based on the literature and evidence from our multi-destination routing experiments on primates, we find that individuals are likely to make quick, heuristic decisions when they encounter routine situations, or signals/cues that accurately predict a certain outcome, or easy problems that experience or evolutionary history has prepared them for. Conversely, effortful decision-making is likely in novel or surprising situations, when signals and cues have unpredictable or uncertain relationships to an outcome, and when problems are computationally complex. Though if problems are overly complex, satisficing via heuristics is likely, to avoid costly mental effort. We present hypotheses for how animals with different socio-ecologies may have to distribute their cognitive effort. Finally, we examine the conservation implications and potential cognitive overload for animals experiencing increasingly novel situations caused by current human-induced rapid environmental change.

Symbolic representation by a two-dimensional matrix for profiling comparative animal behavior

The growing view that consciousness is widespread, multimodal, and evolutionarily non-linear in complexity across the animal kingdom has given rise recently to a variety of strategies for representing the heterogeneous nature of animal phenomenology. While based on markers clearly associated with consciousness in humans, most of these strategies are theoretical constructs lacking empirical data and are based on metrics appropriate for humans but difficult to measure in most non-human species. I propose a novel symbolic profile based on readily observable behaviors that logically constitute subjective experience across the entire spectrum of animals that possess a centralized nervous system. Three modes (markers) of behavior displayed by all animals - volition, interaction, and self-direction - are quantified according to the frequency, variety, and dynamism of each mode. The resulting matrix of 3 modes x 3 metrics can be expressed as a bi-directional heatmap, allowing for quick and easy inter-species comparisons. The overall effect is to highlight both similarities and differences in the subjective experience of animals ranging from crustaceans to primates.

Does bumblebee preference of continuous over interrupted strings in string-pulling tasks indicate means-end comprehension?

Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display means-end comprehension in a string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with two options: one where a string was connected to an artificial flower containing a reward and the other presenting an interrupted string. Bumblebees displayed a consistent preference for pulling connected strings over interrupted ones after training with a stepwise pulling technique. When exposed to novel string colors, bees continued to exhibit a bias towards pulling the connected string. This suggests that bumblebees engage in featural generalization of the visual display of the string connected to the flower in this task. If the view of the string connected to the flower was restricted during the training phase, the proportion of bumblebees choosing the connected strings significantly decreased. Similarly, when the bumblebees were confronted with coiled connected strings during the testing phase, they failed to identify and reject the interrupted strings. This finding underscores the significance of visual consistency in enabling the bumblebees to perform the task successfully. Our results suggest that bumblebees' ability to distinguish between continuous strings and interrupted strings relies on a combination of image matching and associative learning, rather than means-end understanding. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes employed by bumblebees when tackling complex spatial tasks.

Pollinator-assisted plant phenotyping, selection, and breeding for crop resilience to abiotic stresses

Food security is threatened by climate change, with heat and drought being the main stresses affecting crop physiology and ecosystem services, such as plant-pollinator interactions. We hypothesize that tracking and ranking pollinators' preferences for flowers under environmental pressure could be used as a marker of plant quality for agricultural breeding to increase crop stress tolerance. Despite increasing relevance of flowers as the most stress sensitive organs, phenotyping platforms aim at identifying traits of resilience by assessing the plant physiological status through remote sensing-assisted vegetative indexes, but find strong bottlenecks in quantifying flower traits and in accurate genotype-to-phenotype prediction. However, as the transport of photoassimilates from leaves (sources) to flowers (sinks) is reduced in low-resilient plants, flowers are better indicators than leaves of plant well-being. Indeed, the chemical composition and amount of pollen and nectar that flowers produce, which ultimately serve as food resources for pollinators, change in response to environmental cues. Therefore, pollinators' preferences could be used as a measure of functional source-to-sink relationships for breeding decisions. To achieve this challenging goal, we propose to develop a pollinator-assisted phenotyping and selection platform for automated quantification of Genotype × Environment × Pollinator interactions through an insect geo-positioning system. Pollinator-assisted selection can be validated by metabolic, transcriptomic, and ionomic traits, and mapping of candidate genes, linking floral and leaf traits, pollinator preferences, plant resilience, and crop productivity. This radical new approach can change the current paradigm of plant phenotyping and find new paths for crop redomestication and breeding assisted by ecological decisions.

Individual consistency in the learning abilities of honey bees: cognitive specialization within sensory and reinforcement modalities

The question of whether individuals perform consistently across a variety of cognitive tasks is relevant for studies of comparative cognition. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is an appropriate model to study cognitive consistency as its learning can be studied in multiple elemental and non-elemental learning tasks. We took advantage of this possibility and studied if the ability of honey bees to learn a simple discrimination correlates with their ability to solve two tasks of higher complexity, reversal learning and negative patterning. We performed four experiments in which we varied the sensory modality of the stimuli (visual or olfactory) and the type (Pavlovian or operant) and complexity (elemental or non-elemental) of conditioning to examine if stable correlated performances could be observed across experiments. Across all experiments, an individual's proficiency to learn the simple discrimination task was positively and significantly correlated with performance in both reversal learning and negative patterning, while the performances in reversal learning and negative patterning were positively, yet not significantly correlated. These results suggest that correlated performances across learning paradigms represent a distinct cognitive characteristic of bees. Further research is necessary to examine if individual cognitive consistency can be found in other insect species as a common characteristic of insect brains.

Semiotically Mediated Human-Bee Communication in the Practice of Brazilian Meliponiculture

Stingless bees are among the most dominant pollinators in the south tropics. As such, the rational beekeeping of stingless bee species, called meliponiculture, is an ancient and relevant activity, related to sustainable agricultural development, and which connects traditional knowledge to innovation and novelty. Given the relevance of this topic, this paper discusses the possibilities of a semiotically mediated communication between humans and Meliponini (stingless bees). Zoosemiotics, as the studies of animal views of the world, is the ideal modelling system for the investigation of the possibilities of mutual understanding between these two species. Starting from the premise that, for there to be inter-specific communication, there must be a shared code, and that this depends on the biological makeup and sensory apparatus of both organisms involved in the communication process, this research suggests that a possible way to communicate with stingless bees is with the use of olfactory (chemical) signals, since this channel seems to be common to both humans and bees. Considering that for human-animal relations one party must be able to recognize the other (iconic learning), it is revealed that chemical signals do allow bees to recognize individual humans, even going so far as profiling this person as 'not a threat'. Finally, bees are seen to act cooperatively while the beekeeper is taking action to protect and maintain the nest, something that can be interpreted as an opening of semiotic relations, where the bees are deeming the beekeeper as part of their social group.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12304-022-09519-2.

Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees

"Ecological intelligence" hypotheses posit that animal learning and memory evolve to meet the demands posed by foraging and, together with social intelligence and cognitive buffer hypotheses, provide a key framework for understanding cognitive evolution.^1-5 However, identifying the critical environments where cognitive investment reaps significant benefits has proved challenging.^6-8 Here, we capitalize upon seasonal variation in forage availability for a social insect model (Bombus terrestris audax) to establish how the benefits of short-term memory, assayed using a radial arm maze (RAM), vary with resource availability. Following a staggered design over 2 years, whereby bees from standardized colonies at identical life-history stages underwent cognitive testing before foraging in the wild, we found that RAM performance predicts foraging efficiency-a key determinant of colony fitness-in plentiful spring foraging conditions but that this relationship is reversed during the summer floral dearth. Our results suggest that the selection for enhanced cognitive abilities is unlikely to be limited to harsh environments where food is hard to find or extract,^5,9-11 highlighting instead that the challenges of rich and plentiful environments, which present multiple options in short succession, could be a broad driver in the evolution of certain cognitive traits. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

Spontaneous relational and object similarity in wild bumblebees

Being able to abstract relations of similarity is considered one of the hallmarks of human cognition. While previous research has shown that other animals (e.g. primates) can attend to relational similarity, they struggle to focus on object similarity. This is in contrast with humans. And it is precisely the ability to attend to objects that it is argued to make relational reasoning uniquely human. What about invertebrates? Despite earlier studies indicating that bees are capable of learning abstract relationships (e.g. 'same' and 'different'), no research has investigated whether bees can spontaneously attend to relational similarity and whether they can do so when relational matches compete with object matches. To test this, a spatial matching task (with and without competing object matches) previously used with children and great apes was adapted for use with wild-caught bumblebees. When object matches were not present, bumblebees spontaneously used relational similarity. Importantly, when competing object matches were present, bumblebees still focused on relations over objects. These findings indicate that the absence of object bias is also present in invertebrates and suggest that the relational gap between humans and other animals is due to their preference for relations over objects.

Wild cognition - linking form and function of cognitive abilities within a natural context

Interest in studying cognitive ecology has moved the field of animal cognition into the wild. Animals face many challenges such as finding food and other resources, avoiding and deterring predators and choosing the best mate to increase their reproductive success. To solve these dilemmas, animals need to rely on a range of cognitive abilities. Studying cognition in natural settings is a powerful approach revealing the link between adaptive form and biological function. Recent technological and analytical advances opened up completely new opportunities and research directions for studying animal cognition. Such innovative studies were able to disclose the variety in cognitive processes that animals use to survive and reproduce. Cognition indeed plays a major role in the daily lives of wild animals, in which the integration of many different types of information using a diverse range of cognitive processes enhances fitness.

Evidence of cognitive specialization in an insect: proficiency is maintained across elemental and higher-order visual learning but not between sensory modalities in honey bees

Individuals differing in their cognitive abilities and foraging strategies may confer a valuable benefit to their social groups as variability may help responding flexibly in scenarios with different resource availability. Individual learning proficiency may either be absolute or vary with the complexity or the nature of the problem considered. Determining if learning abilities correlate between tasks of different complexity or between sensory modalities has a high interest for research on brain modularity and task-dependent specialisation of neural circuits. The honeybee Apis mellifera constitutes an attractive model to address this question due to its capacity to successfully learn a large range of tasks in various sensory domains. Here we studied whether the performance of individual bees in a simple visual discrimination task (a discrimination between two visual shapes) is stable over time and correlates with their capacity to solve either a higher-order visual task (a conceptual discrimination based on spatial relations between objects) or an elemental olfactory task (a discrimination between two odorants). We found that individual learning proficiency within a given task was maintained over time and that some individuals performed consistently better than others within the visual modality, thus showing consistent aptitude across visual tasks of different complexity. By contrast, performance in the elemental visual-learning task did not predict performance in the equivalent elemental olfactory task. Overall, our results suggest the existence of cognitive specialisation within the hive, which may contribute to ecological social success.

A projectome of the bumblebee central complex

Insects have evolved diverse and remarkable strategies for navigating in various ecologies all over the world. Regardless of species, insects share the presence of a group of morphologically conserved neuropils known collectively as the central complex (CX). The CX is a navigational center, involved in sensory integration and coordinated motor activity. Despite the fact that our understanding of navigational behavior comes predominantly from ants and bees, most of what we know about the underlying neural circuitry of such behavior comes from work in fruit flies. Here, we aim to close this gap, by providing the first comprehensive map of all major columnar neurons and their projection patterns in the CX of a bee. We find numerous components of the circuit that appear to be highly conserved between the fly and the bee, but also highlight several key differences which are likely to have important functional ramifications.

Minimal physicalism as a scale-free substrate for cognition and consciousness

Theories of consciousness and cognition that assume a neural substrate automatically regard phylogenetically basal, nonneural systems as nonconscious and noncognitive. Here, we advance a scale-free characterization of consciousness and cognition that regards basal systems, including synthetic constructs, as not only informative about the structure and function of experience in more complex systems but also as offering distinct advantages for experimental manipulation. Our "minimal physicalist" approach makes no assumptions beyond those of quantum information theory, and hence is applicable from the molecular scale upwards. We show that standard concepts including integrated information, state broadcasting via small-world networks, and hierarchical Bayesian inference emerge naturally in this setting, and that common phenomena including stigmergic memory, perceptual coarse-graining, and attention switching follow directly from the thermodynamic requirements of classical computation. We show that the self-representation that lies at the heart of human autonoetic awareness can be traced as far back as, and serves the same basic functions as, the stress response in bacteria and other basal systems.

Wild non-eusocial bees learn a colour discrimination task in response to simulated predation events

Despite representing the majority of bee species, non-eusocial bees (e.g. solitary, subsocial, semisocial, and quasisocial species) are comparatively understudied in learning, memory, and cognitive-like behaviour compared to eusocial bees, such as honeybees and bumblebees. Ecologically relevant colour discrimination tasks are well-studied in eusocial bees, and research has shown that a few non-eusocial bee species are also capable of colour learning and long-term memory retention. Australia hosts over 2000 native bee species, most of which are non-eusocial, yet evidence of cognitive-like behaviour and learning abilities under controlled testing conditions is lacking. In the current study, I examine the learning ability of a non-eusocial Australian bee, Lasioglossum (Chilalictus) lanarium, using aversive differential conditioning during a colour discrimination task. L. lanarium learnt to discriminate between salient blue- and yellow-coloured stimuli following training with simulated predation events. This study acts as a bridge between cognitive studies on eusocial and non-social bees and introduces a framework for testing non-eusocial wild bees on elemental visual learning tasks using aversive conditioning. Non-eusocial bee species are far more numerous than eusocial species and contribute to agriculture, economics, and ecosystem services in Australia and across the globe. Thus, it is important to study their capacity to learn flower traits allowing for successful foraging and pollination events, thereby permitting us a better understanding of their role in plant-pollinator interactions.

Patch selection by bumble bees navigating discontinuous landscapes

Pollen and nectar resources are unevenly distributed over space and bees must make routing decisions when navigating patchy resources. Determining the patch selection process used by bees is crucial to understanding bee foraging over discontinuous landscapes. To elucidate this process, we developed four distinct probability models of bee movement where the size and the distance to the patch determined the attractiveness of a patch. A field experiment with a center patch and four peripheral patches of two distinct sizes and distances from the center was set up in two configurations. Empirical transition probabilities from the center to each peripheral patch were obtained at two sites and two years. The best model was identified by comparing observed and predicted transition probabilities, where predicted values were obtained by incorporating the spatial dimensions of the field experiment into each model's mathematical expression. Bumble bees used both patch size and isolation distance when selecting a patch and could assess the total amount of resources available in a patch. Bumble bees prefer large, nearby patches. This information will facilitate the development of a predictive framework to the study of bee movement and of models that predict the movement of genetically engineered pollen in bee-pollinated crops.

Bumblebees perceive the spatial layout of their environment in relation to their body size and form to minimize inflight collisions

Animals that move through complex habitats must frequently contend with obstacles in their path. Humans and other highly cognitive vertebrates avoid collisions by perceiving the relationship between the layout of their surroundings and the properties of their own body profile and action capacity. It is unknown whether insects, which have much smaller brains, possess such abilities. We used bumblebees, which vary widely in body size and regularly forage in dense vegetation, to investigate whether flying insects consider their own size when interacting with their surroundings. Bumblebees trained to fly in a tunnel were sporadically presented with an obstructing wall containing a gap that varied in width. Bees successfully flew through narrow gaps, even those that were much smaller than their wingspans, by first performing lateral scanning (side-to-side flights) to visually assess the aperture. Bees then reoriented their in-flight posture (i.e., yaw or heading angle) while passing through, minimizing their projected frontal width and mitigating collisions; in extreme cases, bees flew entirely sideways through the gap. Both the time that bees spent scanning during their approach and the extent to which they reoriented themselves to pass through the gap were determined not by the absolute size of the gap, but by the size of the gap relative to each bee's own wingspan. Our findings suggest that, similar to humans and other vertebrates, flying bumblebees perceive the affordance of their surroundings relative their body size and form to navigate safely through complex environments.

Validity of Cognitive Tests for Non-human Animals: Pitfalls and Prospects

Comparative psychology assesses cognitive abilities and capacities of non-human animals and humans. Based on performance differences and similarities in various species in cognitive tests, it is inferred how their minds work and reconstructed how cognition might have evolved. Critically, such species comparisons are only valid and meaningful if the tasks truly capture individual and inter-specific variation in cognitive abilities rather than contextual variables that might affect task performance. Unlike in human test psychology, however, cognitive tasks for non-human primates (and most other animals) have been rarely evaluated regarding their measurement validity. We review recent studies that address how non-cognitive factors affect performance in a set of commonly used cognitive tasks, and if cognitive tests truly measure individual variation in cognitive abilities. We find that individual differences in emotional and motivational factors primarily affect performance via attention. Hence, it is crucial to systematically control for attention during cognitive tasks to obtain valid and reliable results. Aspects of test design, however, can also have a substantial effect on cognitive performance. We conclude that non-cognitive factors are a minor source of measurement error if acknowledged and properly controlled for. It is essential, however, to validate and eventually re-design several primate cognition tasks in order to ascertain that they capture the cognitive abilities they were designed to measure. This will provide a more solid base for future cognitive comparisons within primates but also across a wider range of non-human animal species.

Spatial cognition in the context of foraging styles and information transfer in ants

Ants are central-place foragers: they always return to the nest, and this requires the ability to remember relationships between features of the environment, or an individual's path through the landscape. The distribution of these cognitive responsibilities within a colony depends on a species' foraging style. Solitary foraging as well as leader-scouting, which is based on information transmission about a distant targets from scouts to foragers, can be considered the most challenging tasks in the context of ants' spatial cognition. Solitary foraging is found in species of almost all subfamilies of ants, whereas leader-scouting has been discovered as yet only in the Formica rufa group of species (red wood ants). Solitary foraging and leader-scouting ant species, although enormously different in their levels of sociality and ecological specificities, have many common traits of individual cognitive navigation, such as the primary use of visual navigation, excellent visual landmark memories, and the subordinate role of odour orientation. In leader-scouting species, spatial cognition and the ability to transfer information about a distant target dramatically differ among scouts and foragers, suggesting individual cognitive specialization. I suggest that the leader-scouting style of recruitment is closely connected with the ecological niche of a defined group of species, in particular, their searching patterns within the tree crown. There is much work to be done to understand what cognitive mechanisms underpin route planning and communication about locations in ants.

Bumblebees Learn a Relational Rule but Switch to a Win-Stay/Lose-Switch Heuristic After Extensive Training

Mapping animal performance in a behavioral task to underlying cognitive mechanisms and strategies is rarely straightforward, since a task may be solvable in more than one manner. Here, we show that bumblebees perform well on a concept-based visual discrimination task but spontaneously switch from a concept-based solution to a simpler heuristic with extended training, all while continually increasing performance. Bumblebees were trained in an arena to find rewards on displays with shapes of different sizes where they could not use low-level visual cues. One group of bees was rewarded at displays with larger shapes and another group at displays with smaller shapes. Analysis of total choices shows bees increased their performance over 30 bouts to above chance. However, analyses of first and sequential choices suggest that after approximately 20 bouts, bumblebees changed to a win-stay/lose-switch strategy. Comparing bees' behavior to a probabilistic model based on a win-stay/lose-switch strategy further supports the idea that bees changed strategies with extensive training. Analyses of unrewarded tests indicate that bumblebees learned and retained the concept of relative size even after they had already switched to a win-stay, lost-shift strategy. We propose that the reason for this strategy switching may be due to cognitive flexibility and efficiency.

I've been robbed! - Can changes in floral traits discourage bee pollination?

Some floral visitors collect nectar by piercing flower external whorls, acting as nectar robbers. They leave robbery vestiges, which can cause changes in floral characteristics, including physical and chemical signals that may influence flower recognition by pollinators. If pollinating bees associate these changes with absence or reduction in nectar volume, they can avoid these flowers, negatively affecting pollination. We aimed to investigate the effect of robbery on primary and secondary attractants. Additionally, we experimentally investigated if the visual signs present in robbed flowers affect the bee pollination of this plant species by discouraging pollinator visits. This study was performed in a very common pollinator-plant-cheaters system comprised by a bee-pollinated Bignoniaceae species and a nectar-robber bee that lands on the corolla tube and makes slits at its base during the nectar robbery. We experimentally isolated the effect of nectar consumption by this nectar-robber and investigated if the slits caused by the nectar-robbers affected the floral scent emission. In addition, we experimentally evaluated the effect of visual signs (slits) associated to the nectar robbery and the effect of nectar depletion on the pollination of Jacaranda caroba (Bignoniaceae). The robbers visited around 75% of the flowers throughout the day and removed significant amounts of nectar from them. However, the damages the robbers cause did not affect floral scent emission and we did not verify significant differences on pollen deposition neither when comparing flowers with slits and control nor when comparing flowers with and without nectar. We showed that even though nectar-robbers visually honestly signal the robbery and deplete high amounts of nectar, they did not affect pollinator visitation. These results showed that presumably antagonistic interactions might in fact not be so.

Abramson C. Olfactory Learning in the Stingless Bee Melipona eburnea Friese (Apidae: Meliponini)

Olfactory learning and floral scents are co-adaptive traits in the plant–pollinator relationship. However, how scent relates to cognition and learning in the diverse group of Neotropical stingless bees is largely unknown. Here we evaluated the ability of Melipona eburnea to be conditioned to scent using the proboscis extension reflex (PER) protocol. Stingless bees did not show PER while harnessed but were able to be PER conditioned to scent when free-to-move in a mini-cage (fmPER). We evaluated the effect of: 1) unconditioned stimulus (US) reward, and 2) previous scent–reward associations on olfactory learning performance. When using unscented-US, PER-responses were low on day 1, but using scented-US reward the olfactory PER-response increased on day 1. On day 2 PER performance greatly increased in bees that previously had experienced the same odor and reward combination, while bees that experienced a different odor on day 2 showed poor olfactory learning. Bees showed higher olfactory PER conditioning to guava than to mango odor. The effect of the unconditioned stimulus reward was not a significant factor in the model on day 2. This indicates that olfactory learning performance can increase via either taste receptors or accumulated experience with the same odor. Our results have application in agriculture and pollination ecology.

Modality-specific impairment of learning by a neonicotinoid pesticide

Neonicotinoid pesticides can impair bees' ability to learn and remember information about flowers, critical for effective foraging. Although these effects on cognition may contribute to broader effects on health and performance, to date they have largely been assayed in simplified protocols that consider learning in a single sensory modality, usually olfaction. Given that real flowers display a variety of potentially useful signals, we assessed the effects of acute neonicotinoid exposure on multimodal learning in free-flying bumblebees. We found that neonicotinoid consumption differentially impacted learning of floral stimuli, impairing scent, but not colour, learning. These findings raise questions about the mechanisms by which pesticides might differentially impair sensory systems, with implications for how neonicotinoids affect multiple aspects of bee ecology.

optoPAD, a closed-loop optogenetics system to study the circuit basis of feeding behaviors

The regulation of feeding plays a key role in determining the fitness of animals through its impact on nutrition. Elucidating the circuit basis of feeding and related behaviors is an important goal in neuroscience. We recently used a system for closed-loop optogenetic manipulation of neurons contingent on the feeding behavior of Drosophila to dissect the impact of a specific subset of taste neurons on yeast feeding. Here, we describe the development and validation of this system, which we term the optoPAD. We use the optoPAD to induce appetitive and aversive effects on feeding by activating or inhibiting gustatory neurons in closed-loop - effectively creating virtual taste realities. The use of optogenetics allowed us to vary the dynamics and probability of stimulation in single flies and assess the impact on feeding behavior quantitatively and with high throughput. These data demonstrate that the optoPAD is a powerful tool to dissect the circuit basis of feeding behavior, allowing the efficient implementation of sophisticated behavioral paradigms to study the mechanistic basis of animals' adaptation to dynamic environments.

Behaviourally specialized foragers are less efficient and live shorter lives than generalists in wasp colonies

A widely held assumption in ecology is that specialists are more efficient than generalists. However, empirical evidence for this fundamental assumption is surprisingly scarce and often contradictory. Theoretically, the evolution of alternative life history strategies is underpinned by a trade-off between activity levels and survival. We investigated the consequences of specialization in a foraging context, by comparing the performance and longevity of closely related individuals in a social insect, the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). Using radio-frequency identification technology, we monitored the lifetime foraging activity of individual wasps from three colonies kept under natural foraging conditions. Returning foragers were video-recorded as they passed the nest entrance so that their foraging load could be assessed. There were substantial differences in foraging activity and survival within and between colonies. At the colony level, foraging specialization was weak. Yet, workers within each nest demonstrated a remarkable range of foraging specialization levels (defined as the degree of overlap between individual and colony-level task allocation) and efficiencies (defined by the number of successful trips and trip duration). We found that specialist foragers were less efficient than generalist siblings within the same colony. Behavioural specialists accomplished fewer successful trips per foraging day, and their trips were typically relatively longer. Specialized foragers also showed reduced life expectancy. The mortality risk was higher for individuals spending relatively more time in the field, yet we found no link between the level of specialization and relative field exposure. Our extensive dataset of unprecedented detail provides strong empirical evidence that behavioural specialization is not associated with a better lifetime performance, on the contrary, the opposite appears true for the common wasp. We also show that the survival of genetically similar individuals can be linked to life-long differences in behaviour according to classical life-history theory predictions.

Immediate early genes in social insects: a tool to identify brain regions involved in complex behaviors and molecular processes underlying neuroplasticity

Social insects show complex behaviors and master cognitive tasks. The underlying neuronal mechanisms, however, are in most cases only poorly understood due to challenges in monitoring brain activity in freely moving animals. Immediate early genes (IEGs) that get rapidly and transiently expressed following neuronal stimulation provide a powerful tool for detecting behavior-related neuronal activity in vertebrates. In social insects, like honey bees, and in insects in general, this approach is not yet routinely established, even though these genes are highly conserved. First studies revealed a vast potential of using IEGs as neuronal activity markers to analyze the localization, function, and plasticity of neuronal circuits underlying complex social behaviors. We summarize the current knowledge on IEGs in social insects and provide ideas for future research directions.

Kenyon Cell Subtypes/Populations in the Honeybee Mushroom Bodies: Possible Function Based on Their Gene Expression Profiles, Differentiation, Possible Evolution, and Application of Genome Editing

Mushroom bodies (MBs), a higher-order center in the honeybee brain, comprise some subtypes/populations of interneurons termed as Kenyon cells (KCs), which are distinguished by their cell body size and location in the MBs, as well as their gene expression profiles. Although the role of MBs in learning ability has been studied extensively in the honeybee, the roles of each KC subtype and their evolution in hymenopteran insects remain mostly unknown. This mini-review describes recent progress in the analysis of gene/protein expression profiles and possible functions of KC subtypes/populations in the honeybee. Especially, the discovery of novel KC subtypes/populations, the “middle-type KCs” and “KC population expressing FoxP,” necessitated a redefinition of the KC subtype/population. Analysis of the effects of inhibiting gene function in a KC subtype-preferential manner revealed the function of the gene product as well as of the KC subtype where it is expressed. Genes expressed in a KC subtype/population-preferential manner can be used to trace the differentiation of KC subtypes during the honeybee ontogeny and the possible evolution of KC subtypes in hymenopteran insects. Current findings suggest that the three KC subtypes are unique characteristics to the aculeate hymenopteran insects. Finally, prospects regarding future application of genome editing for the study of KC subtype functions in the honeybee are described. Genes expressed in a KC subtype-preferential manner can be good candidate target genes for genome editing, because they are likely related to highly advanced brain functions and some of them are dispensable for normal development and sexual maturation in honeybees.

Designing Brains for Pain: Human to Mollusc

There is compelling evidence that the "what it feels like" subjective experience of sensory stimuli arises in the cerebral cortex in both humans as well as mammalian experimental animal models. Humans are alone in their ability to verbally communicate their experience of the external environment. In other species, sensory awareness is extrapolated on the basis of behavioral indicators. For instance, cephalopods have been claimed to be sentient on the basis of their complex behavior and anecdotal reports of human-like intelligence. We have interrogated the findings of avoidance learning behavioral paradigms and classical brain lesion studies and conclude that there is no evidence for cephalopods feeling pain. This analysis highlighted the questionable nature of anthropometric assumptions about sensory experience with increased phylogenetic distance from humans. We contend that understanding whether invertebrates such as molluscs are sentient should first begin with defining the computational processes and neural circuitries underpinning subjective awareness. Using fundamental design principles, we advance the notion that subjective awareness is dependent on observer neural networks (networks that in some sense introspect the neural processing generating neural representations of sensory stimuli). This introspective process allows the observer network to create an internal model that predicts the neural processing taking place in the network being surveyed. Predictions arising from the internal model form the basis of a rudimentary form of awareness. We develop an algorithm built on parallel observer networks that generates multiple levels of sensory awareness. A network of cortical regions in the human brain has the appropriate functional properties and neural interconnectivity that is consistent with the predicted circuitry of the algorithm generating pain awareness. By contrast, the cephalopod brain lacks the necessary neural circuitry to implement such an algorithm. In conclusion, we find no compelling behavioral, functional, or neuroanatomical evidence to indicate that cephalopods feel pain.

Cognitive Aspects of Comb-Building in the Honeybee?

The wax-made comb of the honeybee is a masterpiece of animal architecture. The highly regular, double-sided hexagonal structure is a near-optimal solution to storing food and housing larvae, economizing on building materials and space. Elaborate though they may seem, such animal constructions are often viewed as the result of 'just instinct,' governed by inflexible, pre-programmed, innate behavior routines. An inspection of the literature on honeybee comb construction, however, reveals a different picture. Workers have to learn, at least in part, certain elements of the technique, and there is considerable flexibility in terms of how the shape of the comb and its gradual manufacture is tailored to the circumstances, especially the available space. Moreover, we explore the 2-century old and now largely forgotten work by François Huber, where glass screens were placed between an expanding comb construction and the intended target wall. Bees took corrective action before reaching the glass obstacle, and altered the ongoing construction so as to reach the nearest wooden wall. Though further experiments will be necessary, these results suggest a form of spatial planning skills. We discuss these findings in the context of what is now known about insect cognition, and ask if it is possible that the production of hexagonal wax combs is the result of behavioral heuristics where a complex structure emerges as the result of simple behavioral rules applied by each individual, or whether prospective cognition might be involved.

Egr-1: A Candidate Transcription Factor Involved in Molecular Processes Underlying Time-Memory

In honey bees, continuous foraging is accompanied by a sustained up-regulation of the immediate early gene Egr-1 (early growth response protein-1) and candidate downstream genes involved in learning and memory. Here, we present a series of feeder training experiments indicating that Egr-1 expression is highly correlated with the time and duration of training even in the absence of the food reward. Foragers that were trained to visit a feeder over the whole day and then collected on a day without food presentation showed Egr-1 up-regulation over the whole day with a peak expression around 14:00. When exposed to a time-restricted feeder presentation, either 2 h in the morning or 2 h in the evening, Egr-1 expression in the brain was up-regulated only during the hours of training. Foragers that visited a feeder in the morning as well as in the evening showed two peaks of Egr-1 expression. Finally, when we prevented time-trained foragers from leaving the colony using artificial rain, Egr-1 expression in the brains was still slightly but significantly up-regulated around the time of feeder training. In situ hybridization studies showed that active foraging and time-training induced Egr-1 up-regulation occurred in the same brain areas, preferentially the small Kenyon cells of the mushroom bodies and the antennal and optic lobes. Based on these findings we propose that foraging induced Egr-1 expression can get regulated by the circadian clock after time-training over several days and Egr-1 is a candidate transcription factor involved in molecular processes underlying time-memory.