title: Accelerated behavioural development changes fine-scale search behaviour and spatial memory in honey bees (Apis mellifera L.).
abstract: Normally, worker honey bees (Apis mellifera) begin foraging when more than 2 weeks old as adults, but if individual bees or the colony is stressed, bees often begin foraging precociously. Here, we examined whether bees that accelerated their behavioural development to begin foraging precociously differed from normal-aged foragers in cognitive performance. We used a social manipulation to generate precocious foragers from small experimental colonies and tested their performance in a free-flight visual reversal learning task, and a test of spatial memory. To assess spatial memory, bees were trained to learn the location of a small sucrose feeder within an array of three landmarks. In tests, the feeder and one landmark were removed and the search behaviour of the bees was recorded. Performance of precocious and normal-aged foragers did not differ in a visual reversal learning task, but the two groups showed a clear difference in spatial memory. Flight behaviour suggested normal-aged foragers were better able to infer the position of the removed landmark and feeder relative to the remaining landmarks than precocious foragers. Previous studies have documented the cognitive decline of old foragers, but this is the first suggestion of a cognitive deficit in young foragers. These data imply that worker honey bees continue their cognitive development during the adult stage. These findings may also help to explain why precocious foragers perform quite poorly as foragers and have a higher than normal loss rate.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, Faculty of Letters, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomokazu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ushitani
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK.
authors.forename: Clint J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Perry
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia Andrew.Barron@mq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Andrew B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Barron
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D012193:Reversal Learning; D065853:Spatial Learning; D065852:Spatial Memory; D013312:Stress, Physiological
keywords: Navigation; Precocious forager; Reversal learning; Social insect; Spatial memory; Temporal polyethism