Relational learning in honeybees (Apis mellifera): Oddity and nonoddity discrimination

High-Speed Videography Reveals How Honeybees Can Turn a Spatial Concept Learning Task Into a Simple Discrimination Task by Stereotyped Flight Movements and Sequential Inspection of Pattern Elements

“…Yet, in the last 50 years, concept learning has been a recurrent theme when exploring animal cognition (Savage-Rumbaugh et al, 1980 ; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1984 ; Akhtar and Tomasello, 1997 ; Zayan and Vauclair, 1998 ; Depy et al, 1999 ; Penn et al, 2008 ; Shettleworth, 2010 ). Scientists have discovered concept learning in various animal taxa, for example the learning of sameness and difference concepts in the pigeon (Zentall and Hogan, 1974 ), in ducklings (Martinho and Kacelnik, 2016 ), monkeys (Wright et al, 1984 ), the honeybee (Giurfa et al, 2001 ), and one study comparing two species of monkeys and pigeons (Wright and Katz, 2006 ); other studies focused on oddity and non-oddity in monkeys (Moon and Harlow, 1955 ), pigeons (Lombardi et al, 1984 ; Lombardi, 2008 ), rats (Taniuchi et al, 2017 ), sea lions (Hille et al, 2006 ), dogs (Gadzichowski et al, 2016 ), and honeybees (Muszynski and Couvillon, 2015 ); the concept of symmetry/asymmetry in honeybees (Giurfa et al, 1996 ). Spatial concepts such as aboveness and belowness have been explored in a number of vertebrates (Zentall and Hogan, 1974 ; Depy et al, 1999 ; Spinozzi et al, 2004 ), and also the honeybee (Avarguès-Weber et al, 2011 , 2012 ).…”

Learning of sameness/difference relationships by honey bees: performance, strategies and ecological context

“…Experiments on oddity and non-oddity learning in free-flying bees were performed [ 15 • ], yet using a different methodology compared to that of the previous work on sameness/difference learning mentioned above [ 5 ]. While the latter used the DMTS and DNMTS tasks, that is, delayed stimulus presentation with respect to a sample stimulus, the oddity/non-oddity experiments presented always three stimuli simultaneously.…”

“…While the latter used the DMTS and DNMTS tasks, that is, delayed stimulus presentation with respect to a sample stimulus, the oddity/non-oddity experiments presented always three stimuli simultaneously. Bees were trained to choose among three colored discs presented horizontally [ 15 • ]. Two were identical and one was different.…”

“…Some bees were rewarded for choosing based on the odd concept while others were rewarded for choosing based on the even concept. Bees learned the discrimination task and transferred correctly their choice to either novel odd or even stimuli depending on the training received [ 15 • ].…”

Special issue of comparative psychology

“…It would have been desirable to see some contributions on dogs and corvids, which are currently receiving considerable research attention in Comparative Psychology. Also, although some fascinating work is being conducted on invertebrates (see e.g., Collett & Collett & Wehner, 1999;Guillette, Hollis & Markarian, 2009;Muszynski & Couvillon, 2015), it does not usually figure prominently in our discipline. Although Comparative Psychology has become increasingly more diversified in terms of the species investigated (see Call et al, in press), one can still get a glimpse in this issue about which are the main zoological groups that have been traditionally favored by comparative psychologists.…”