DOI: 10.5061/dryad.pnvx0k6x9
title: Positive affective contagion in bumblebees

description: Affective contagion, a core component of empathy, has been widely
 characterized in social vertebrates, but its existence in any invertebrate
 is unknown. Using a cognitive bias paradigm we demonstrate positive
 affective contagion in bumblebees. After being trained on colored flowers
 with different reinforcements, bees that interacted with a conspecific in
 a positive affective state were quicker and more likely than controls to
 land on ambiguous colored flowers, indicating the transfer of a positive
 judgement bias between bees. Additional observations and experiments
 showed that affect could be transmitted between bees without physical
 contact, i.e., through visual modality alone. Our findings suggest that
 affective contagion may be an evolutionarily widespread mechanism present
 in both social vertebrates and social insects.
description: # Positive emotional contagion in bumblebees
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pnvx0k6x9](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pnvx0k6x9) This dataset contains all the raw training and testing data used for the statistical analyses and visualisation in the main text. ## training.csv: This file contains data from the training phase of the latency-based go/no-go judgement bias task. 'beeID' entries are the unique identification numbers for each individual bee used in each experiment, coded by integer; 'colony' entries are the unique identification numbers for each colony, coded by letter (A, B, C, ...); 'experiment' entries are the experimental groups (e.g. individual control, individual reward, social control, social reward, etc.); 'colorpositive' entries are the rewarding color used, with 1 = blue, and 2 = green; 'trial' entries are the training trial numbers (integer, starts at 1); 'latency' values are the time taken (in seconds) for a bee to land on a stimulus. Note that maximum latency recorded was 180 seconds; bees that did not land within 180s were censored at 180. ## testing.csv: This file contains data from the testing phase of the latency-based go/no-go judgement bias task. 'beeID' entries are the unique identification numbers for each individual bee used in each experiment (integer); 'colony' entries are the unique identification numbers for each colony (letter); 'testsequence' entries are the counterbalanced test sequence, with 1 = [NP(near positive), M(middle), NN(near negative)], 2 = [NP, NN, M], 3 = [NN, NP, M], 4 = [M, NP, NN], 5 = [M, NN, NP], and 6 = [NN, M, NP]; 'colorpositive' entries are the rewarding colour used, with 1 = blue, and 2 = green; 'experiment' entries are the experimental groups; 'testcolor' entries are the ambiguous color stimulus being tested, including P(positive), NP(near positive), M(middle), NN(near negative), N(negative); 'latency' values are the are the time taken (in seconds) for a bee to land on a stimulus. Note that latency was recorded same as training file. ## testing_active_choice.csv: This file contains data from the active choice judgement bias task (two-choice T-maze). 'beeID' entries are the unique identification numbers for each individual bee used in each experiment (alphanumeric; letter + integer); 'colony' entries are the unique identification numbers for each colony (letter); 'experiment' entries are the experimental groups (social control, social reward); 'higharm' entries are the side of the T- maze arm containing the high-value sucrose solution (Left or Right); 'highcolor' entries are the high-reward colour used, with 1 = blue, and 2 = green; 'trainingaccuracy' entries are the accuracy of the last 20 training trials; 'testsequence' entries are the counterbalanced test sequence, with 1 = [NH(near-high), H(high), M(middle), L(low), NL(near-low)], 2 = [NH, L, M, H, NL], 3 = [NL, H, M, L, NH], 4 = [NL, L, M, H, NH], 5 = [M, H, NH, L, NL], 6 = [M, L, NH, H, NL], 7 = [NH, H, NL, L, M], 8 = [NH, L, NL, H, M], 9 = [NL, H, NH, L, M], 10 = [NL, L, NH, H, M], 11 = [M, H, NL, L, NH], 12 = [M, L, NL, H, NH]; 'testcolor' entries are the conditioned or ambiguous color tested, chosen from H(high), NH(near-high), M(middle), NL(near-low), and L(low); 'response' entries are the arm chosen by the bee, with 1 = chose the high-reward arm, 0 = chose the low-reward arm. ## affective_contagion_latency_analysis.Rmd: This file contains the R Markdown script for the statistical analysis and visualization of the latency-based go/no-go judgement bias task in the main text . It uses the 'training.csv' and 'testing.csv' listed above. ## affective_contagion_latency_analysis.html: Rendered HTML output from the above .Rmd file, including full analysis results, figures, and model outputs. ## active_choice_affective_contagion_analysis.Rmd: This file contains the R Markdown scriptcode for the statistical analysis and the visualization of the active-choice judgement bias task. It uses the 'testing_active_choice.csv' listed above. ## active_choice_affective_contagion_analysis.html: Rendered HTML output from the above .Rmd file.