title: Recruits of the stingless bee Scaptotrigona pectoralis learn food odors from the nest atmosphere.
abstract: The ability to learn food odors inside the nest and to associate them with food sources in the field is of essential importance for the recruitment of nestmates in social bees. We investigated odor learning by workers within the hive and the influence of these odors on their food choice in the field in the stingless bee Scaptotrigona pectoralis. During the experiments, recruited bees had to choose between two feeders, one with an odor that was present inside the nest during the recruitment process, and one with an unknown odor. In all experiments with different odor combinations (linalool/phenylacetaldehyde, geraniol/eugenol) a significant majority of bees visited the feeder with the odor they had experienced in their nest (chi (2)-tests; p < 0.05). By contrast, the bees showed no preference for one of two feeders when they were either baited with the same odor (linalool) or contained no odor. Our results clearly show that naïve workers of S. pectoralis can learn the odor of a food source during the recruitment process from the nest atmosphere and that their subsequent food search in the field is influenced by the learned odor.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, Ulm 89069, Germany. christian.reichle@uni-ulm.de
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reichle
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jarau
authors.forename: Ingrid
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Aguilar
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ayasse
mesh_terms: D000821:Animal Feed; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006799:Housing, Animal; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D009812:Odorants; D012919:Social Behavior; D013395:Sucrose
chemical_list: D013395:Sucrose