Blocking in landmark-based search in honeybees

Chen, Ken

doi:10.3758/bf03192811

Cited by 32 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…Comparative psychology has revealed broad regularities in the general principles of learning across invertebrate and vertebrate taxa (Logue 1988;Domjan 1998) and across spatial and temporal domains (Cheng & Spetch 2001). The general principles that apply to learning in bees, pigeons and rats are likely to apply to fishes also.…”

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Learning of Foraging Skills by Fish

Warburton

Hughes

2011

Fish Cognition and Behavior

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IntroductionInvestigations of the role of learning and memory in the foraging behaviour of fishes are at an exciting stage. Although less thoroughly studied than traditional laboratory favourites such as rats, pigeons or bees, fish species are no longer to be consigned to the 'poorly understood' category. It is now possible to place the capacities of fish in the context of learning and memory as a whole, as evidenced by previous reviews such as those by Hart (1986Hart ( , 1993, Hughes et al. (1992) and Kieffer & Colgan (1992). The present chapter attempts to integrate perspectives and findings from the fields of behavioural ecology and comparative psychology. This approach has been adopted for the following reasons:1. Comparative psychology has revealed broad regularities in the general principles of learning across invertebrate and vertebrate taxa (Logue 1988; Domjan 1998) and across spatial and temporal domains (Cheng & Spetch 2001). The general principles that apply to learning in bees, pigeons and rats are likely to apply to fishes also. Psychology can clarify the mechanisms that underlie observed behaviour, while behavioural ecology can evaluate the adaptive significance of behavioural capacities demonstrated by psychology. 2. In several cases, static first-generation models based on optimal foraging theory (OFT) that do not represent temporal changes in internal state fail to predict observed behaviour (Hart 1993). More recent studies using more flexible (e.g. dynamic-programming) models have been more successful because of their ability to represent changes in internal state (e.g. physiology and learning), interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic variables and continuous behavioural adjustment in response to these factors (Ehlinger 1989;Kieffer & Colgan 1991;Hart 1993;Dall et al. 1999). Although standard OFT models predict that animals should exhibit all-or-nothing choice, experiments usually reveal partial preferences. It is likely that future models will draw increasingly on psychological effects (e.g. discrimination, memory, cue competition, interference and attention) to explain such divergences from the predictions of simple or idealised models and to test models based on risk and information (Shettleworth 1988).

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Learning of Foraging Skills by Fish

Warburton

Hughes

2011

Fish Cognition and Behavior

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“…In experiments in which the same experimental paradigm has been used (e.g., Sánchez-Moreno, Rodrigo, Chamizo, & Mackintosh, 1999), evidence has been found that an auditory cue can overshadow a visual landmark cue (and that the landmark overshadows the auditory cue). Blocking among spatial landmarks has also been reported in honeybees (Cheng & Spetch, 2001), and overshadowinghas been reported among spatial cues in a computer-display-basedsearch task in pigeons and humans (Spetch, 1995).…”

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No evidence for overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues

Brown

Yang

DiGian

2002

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of redundant and relevant visual cues on spatial pattern learning. Rats searched for hidden food items on the tops of poles that formed a square (Experiment 1) or a checkerboard (Experiment 2) pattern. The experimental groups were trained with visual cues that specified the locations of the baited poles. All groups were tested without visual cues so that any overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues could be detected. Spatial choices were controlled by the spatial pattern and by the visual cues in both experiments. However, there was no evidence of overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues in either experiment. The results are consistent with the idea that the representation of the spatial pattern that guides choices is not controlled by the same learning processes as those that produce associations between visual cues and food locations.

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“…This failure could represent a form of blocking in which a previously learned association prevents a new association from forming (Kamin, 1969;Cheng and Spetch, 2001). In the experiments by Towne et al (Towne et al, 2005), the recipient landscape closely resembled the bees' natal landscape, and several features of the food source at the recipient site -the design of the feeder, the scent of the food, the landmarks en route to the feeder, the feeder's distance from the hive, the local landmarks at the feeder and the times of day at which food was available -were all familiar.…”

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confidence: 99%

Honeybees can learn the relationship between the solar ephemeris and a newly-experienced landscape

Towne

2008

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYMany species learn the sunʼs daily pattern of azimuthal movement (the solar ephemeris function) for use in sun-compass orientation. In honeybees, this learning is accomplished with much innate guidance and yields stubborn, imprinting-like retention of certain aspects of the stored information. One such case involves the failure of transplanted bees to update their memories of the relationship between the solar ephemeris and a new landscape, even after many daysʼ experience at the new site. In the present study, I ask whether the bees in previous transplantation experiments failed to update their memories of the relationship between the sun and landscape because the source and recipient landscapes were (rotated) panoramic twins of each other, each dominated by a conspicuous treeline. To test this hypothesis, I transplanted bees from their natal site at the bottom of a valley to a panoramically different, treelined site and later tested the beesʼ knowledge of the sunʼs course in relation to the treeline. The test involved observing the beesʼ communicative dances under overcast skies at a second treeline that was a mirror image of the first. The cloudy-day dances show that the bees had indeed learned the relationship between sunʼs pattern of movement and the (panoramically novel) treelined site, indicating that the beesʼ memory of the relationship between the ephemeris function and the landscape is not incapable of revision as the earlier results had suggested. I discuss these results in the context of a brief summary of our current understanding of solar ephemeris learning in bees.

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Blocking in landmark-based search in honeybees

Cited by 32 publications

References 45 publications

Learning of Foraging Skills by Fish

Learning of Foraging Skills by Fish

No evidence for overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues

Honeybees can learn the relationship between the solar ephemeris and a newly-experienced landscape

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