Correspondence

3267

Response to ‘What can bees really tell us about the face processing system inhumans?’
Whilst humans have a large brain with regional
specialization for solving complex tasks (Kandel et al., 2000),in certain cases the miniature brain of invertebrates performs
analogous tasks. For example, bees are capable of using topdown visual processing (Zhang and Srinivasan, 1994), canbalance conflicting speed accuracy demands in task allocation(Chittka et al., 2003), learn principles of symbolic matching(Giurfa et al., 2001), solve complex maze-type problems
and demonstrate context-dependent learning (Zhang andSrinivasan, 2004) and can use a symbolic coding system tocommunicate with conspecifics (von Frisch, 1967).
Studies of the capabilities of bees question the extent
to which large specialized brains are required to solve
sophisticated cognitive tasks (Zhang and Srinivasan, 2004).
What we can learn from the miniature brain is the extent towhich higher functions can be achieved without the complexity(and associated cost) of a large mammalian brain. For bees, it
is reasonably straightforward to control the ontogenetic historyof individuals, and if the bee’s brain can reveal novel solutions
for face processing this will potentially lead to algorithms for
artificial intelligence.
Our recent study (Dyer et al., 2005) does not exclude thepossibility that humans have regional specialization thatallows for fast processing of a relatively large number offaces (p. 4713). However, the finding that bees can recognize
stimuli representing human faces does question the extent
to which regional specialization is actually necessary for abrain to perform particular tasks; especially for reasonably
straightforward face recognition tasks (although even inhumans very few subjects score perfectly on Warrington facetests) (Warrington, 1996). It is clear from our study that somelevel of face recognition is possible from a miniature brain withabsolutely no evolutionary history for this task.
It is unlikely that bees will be able to recognize conspecifics
using facial cues, not because of a lack of cognitive ability but
because individual bees probably have insufficient facial
markings to enable a visual identification. An important factor
in the impressive conspecific face recognition capabilities ofpaper wasps is that different individuals have specific facemarks (Tibbetts, 2002), which bees do not have. Even humans
are typically poor at recognizing face stimuli when the stimuli
class appears too similar; for example, recognizing individuals
from a different race category (Valentine and Endo, 1992).
Thus, it would not really be surprising if bees cannot recognize
conspecifics, even though it is clear that highly trained
individual bees are capable of recognizing human faces.
The study by Schwarzer et al. (Schwarzer et al., 2005) does
show some evidence that children use configural processing
less than adults (p. 352) and so does not fully discount the ideathat the visual system develops configural strategies withexperience. In agreement with previous work that demonstrates
that humans use feature extraction and configural processing
for face recognition (Collishaw and Hole, 2000), the study by
Schwarzer et al. presents evidence that humans use both feature
extraction and/or configural strategies (Schwarzer et al., 2005).
The interesting point from recent insect vision studies is thatbees also appear to use feature extraction and configuralprocessing depending upon level of experience with stimuli(Giurfa et al., 2003), and thus bees serve as a good model tounderstand how processes might operate in a miniature brain.
As visual strategies used by bees can potentially be whollytransferred to artificial intelligence applications (Srinivasan etal., 1997), this is an exciting model from which we might learna great deal.
doi:10.1242/jeb.02412

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Adrian G. Dyer
Department of Physiology, Monash University, Clayton 3800,
Australiae-mail: a.dyer@latrobe.edu.auTHE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY