The correlation of learning speed and natural foraging success in bumble-bees

Abstract

Despite the widespread assumption that the learning abilities of animals are adapted to the particular environments in which they operate, the quantitative effects of learning performance on fitness remain virtually unknown. Here, we evaluate the learning performance of bumble-bees (Bombus terrestris) from multiple colonies in an ecologically relevant associative learning task under laboratory conditions, before testing the foraging performance of the same colonies under the field conditions. We demonstrate that variation in learning speed among bumble-bee colonies is directly correlated with the foraging performance, a robust fitness measure, under natural conditions. Colonies vary in learning speed by a factor of nearly five, with the slowest learning colonies collecting 40% less nectar than the fastest learning colonies. Such a steep fitness function is suggestive of strong selection for higher learning speed. Partial correlation analysis reveals that other factors such as forager body size or colour preference appear to be negligible in our study. Although our study does not directly prove causality of learning on foraging success, our approach of correlating natural within-species variation in these two factors represents a major advance over traditional between-species correlative analyses where comparability can be compromised by the fact that species vary along multiple dimensions.

The pollination potential of free-foraging bumblebee (Bombus spp.) males (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

“…Menzel 2001;Raine and Chittka 2007;Raine and Chittka 2008) and its efficient exploitation (e.g. Lihoreau, et al 2011; has been impressively demonstrated in bumblebee workers (Laloi, et al 1999).…”

Chronic neonicotinoid pesticide exposure and parasite stress differentially affects learning in honeybees and bumblebees

“…For social species such as honeybees and bumblebees, where colonies are dependent on food provided by forager bees, efficient learning, which thus enables efficient foraging, is an important prerequisite for colony growth and success [2,3]. Therefore, anthropogenic or environmental stress factors that may cause subtle changes in behaviour and cognitive abilities have the potential to incur significant negative impacts on pollinators (e.g.…”

False memory susceptibility is correlated with categorisation ability in humans

“…The protocol for the visual presentation of the wordlists was adapted from Peters et al , (2008). The categorisation test was constructed from educational aids published by Coordination Group Publications Ltd ( Parsons, 2002a; Parsons, 2002b), Chukra Ltd (2007) and Eleven Plus Exam Group (2010).…”

“…False memory, the phenomenon of remembering something that actually never occurred, has become a widely studied topic since its origins in Binet’s (1900) La Suggestibilité and Bartlett’s (1932) Remembering . The pervasiveness of such false memories generates an evolutionary puzzle; in the face of selection pressure for accuracy of memory ( Dukas, 1999; Mery, 2013; Raine & Chittka, 2008), how could such systematic failures have persisted over evolutionary time? As with perceptual illusions, false memories might be inevitable by-products of otherwise adaptive cognitive processes.…”

“…Inter-individual variation is the raw material for evolution, and offers the possibility to quantify the fitness benefits of cognitive traits in natural settings ( Cole et al , 2012; Raine & Chittka, 2008; Rowe & Healy, 2014; Thornton et al , 2014) and to test potential trade-offs between one cognitive capacity and another ( Boogert et al , 2011; Raine & Chittka, 2012). Here we investigate a potential correlation between an individual’s proneness to semantic type false memories and their categorisation ability.…”