Similar but Different: How Foraging Bumblebees ('Bombus Impatiens') Treat Flowers and Pictures of Flowers
Creators: name: Thompson, Emma
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2016
Subjects: Bumblebee
Picture-object correspondence
Delayed matching

description: Flowers, the sole natural source of pollen and nectar for bees, present many similar features, in colour, shape, size and scent, which facilitate pollinator attraction. This similarity among stimuli requires perception of commonality but also a capacity for differentiation between similar but different stimuli. While many flowers of a similar type will elicit approach and foraging, failure to access resources on any individual flower in an array (e.g. due to depletion) will not necessarily generalize and deter further foraging. Such conditions demand that bees respond to both the similarity and differences among stimuli which may share many common features but differ individually in available resources. Two questions are raised by this challenge and will herein be addressed: how do bees perceive and respond to ‘similar but different’ stimuli? And, how do bees use such cues to find rewarding flowers? Picture-object correspondence has not been previously specifically studied in invertebrates. The correspondence between picture-cue and object stimuli may offer a unique opportunity to trigger memory for corresponding targets while still retaining an important distinction between unrewarding cue and rewarding targets. Perception of pictures is not always perceived by animals as either the same as or equivalent to the intended subject. According to Fagot et al. (2000) the perceived relationship may result in confusion, independence or equivalence and is dependent upon experience. The objectives of this thesis are twofold: first, determine how bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) perceive the relationship between objects and corresponding pictures and secondly, to determine whether or not bees may be able to attend to and use pictures as cues while foraging. The correspondence of picture and object by bees was evaluated with four experiments of preference: (1) learned differentiation; spontaneous association to (2) colour, and (3) achromatic, impoverished images; and (4) learned picture cue use. Firstly, results show that bees do not confuse an object with a corresponding picture but nevertheless do perceive a relationship between them if colour cues are retained. Altered, achromatic images were not consistently treated as corresponding to coloured objects. Secondly, bees can learn to use a picture cue in a delayed matching foraging task. Results further suggest a role of three contributing factors in bumblebee picture cue use: (i) conditions of high inconsistency as to which target will be rewarding; (ii) stable target locations; and (iii) individual foraging experience. It appears that bumblebees can learn to use cues, in a delayed matching task, when the location of the corresponding target is known and stable, the individual bee has acquired some experience in successful foraging, and reward is otherwise unpredictable without the use of the cue. Bees may disregard secondary cues as noise under conditions of high target predictability whereby floral constancy or target perseveration may be most efficient, but attend to and learn such cues as signals if target reward is highly unpredictable. The conditions for this sensitivity may coincide with naturally occurring floral cycles.