DOI: 10.5061/dryad.b8gtht7qt
title: Flexible, abstract rhythm perception in bumblebees

description: Flexible, abstract rhythm perception underpins human music, dance, and
 speech, but has only been demonstrated in a few select birds and mammals.
 Here, we show that bumblebees also form robust abstract rhythm
 representations. Free‑flying bees learned to discriminate two arbitrary
 repeating flashing light sequences, balanced to preclude the use of any
 local cues. Bees successfully recognized these learned rhythmic patterns
 at novel, faster, and slower tempi. Bees trained on vibrational patterns
 transferred their learning to equivalent flashing light patterns,
 demonstrating cross-modal rhythm perception. These findings reveal that
 even an insect brain can encode and generalize arbitrary complex temporal
 patterns, suggesting that abstract rhythm perception can emerge from
 relatively simple neural architectures and pointing to deep evolutionary
 roots for a domain‐general rhythm cognition across animals.
description: # Flexible, abstract rhythm perception in bumblebees Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.b8gtht7qt](10.5061/dryad.b8gtht7qt) ## Description of the
 data and file structure #### File: Data_S1.csv **Description:** Data S1
 contains all the raw training data used for the statistical analyses and
 visualization in the main text for Figure 1. * ‘beeID’ entries are the
 unique identification numbers for each individual bee used in each
 experiment; * ‘colony’ entries are the unique identification numbers for
 each colony; * ‘setting’ entries indicate which pattern was rewarding
 where 1 means that pattern A contained sugar and pattern B contained
 quinine and 2 means the opposite contingency. * ‘exp’ entries are the
 experiments (rate = regular patterns in experiment 1; pattern = irregular
 pattern in experiment 2; tempo 1, 2, and 3 = irregular patterns at varying
 tempos in experiment 3, where the tempo listed is the one the bee was
 tested on; * ‘trial’ entries indicate each choice/landing by the bee
 during the test; * 'choice' entries indicate whether the bee
 landed on the correct pattern (1) or incorrect pattern (0) during the
 test. #### File: Data_S2.csv **Description:** Data S2 contains all the raw
 training data used for the statistical analyses and visualization in the
 main text for Figure 2. * ‘beeID’ entries are the unique identification
 numbers for each individual bee used in each experiment; * ‘colony’
 entries are the unique identification numbers for each colony; * ‘setting’
 entries indicate the pattern-reward-side contingency, where 1 means reward
 on right for pattern A and reward on left for pattern B while 2 means
 reward on left for pattern A and reward on right for pattern B; *
 ‘testseq’ entries indicate the order in which the two patterns appeared in
 the two tests (1 means pattern A was tested first and 2 means pattern B
 was tested first); * ‘trial’ entries indicate the trial number during the
 training phase or whether it was testA or testB; * ‘pattern’ entries
 indicate which pattern was displayed during the training trial or test; *
 ‘choice’ entries indicate whether the bee chose the correct (1) or
 incorrect (0) side arm. #### File: Data_S3.csv **Description:** Data S3
 contains all raw behavioral records from the irregular pattern test
 (experiment 2), used for the statistical analyses and visualization in
 Figure S2. * 'beeID' entries are the unique identification
 numbers for each individual bee; * 'colony' entries are the
 unique identification numbers for each colony; * 'setting'
 entries indicate which pattern was rewarding where 1 means that pattern A
 contained sugar and pattern B contained quinine and 2 means the opposite
 contingency; * 'behavior' entries specify the response type,
 including hovering followed by landing on the rewarded conditioned
 stimulus ('hover_land_CS+'), hovering followed by landing on the
 aversive quinine-associated conditioned stimulus
 ('hover_land_CS−'), hovering followed by rejection of the
 rewarded conditioned stimulus ('hover_reject_CS+'), and hovering
 followed by rejection of the aversive quinine-associated conditioned
 stimulus ('hover_reject_CS−'). * 'duration' entries
 report the hovering time (in seconds) preceding the bee's landing or
 rejection decision. ####