Appetitive and aversive olfactory learning induce similar generalization rates in the honey bee.

Appetitive and aversive learning drive an animal toward or away from stimuli predicting reinforcement, respectively. The specificity of these memories may vary due to differences in cost–benefit relationships associated with appetitive and aversive contexts. As a consequence, generalization performances may differ after appetitive and aversive training. Here, we determined whether honey bees show different rates of olfactory generalization following appetitive olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response, or aversive olfactory conditioning of the sting extension response. In both cases, we performed differential conditioning, which improves discrimination learning between a reinforced odor (CS?) and a non-reinforced odor (CS-) and evaluated generalization to two novel odors whose similarity to the CS? and the CS- was different. We show, given the same level of discriminatory performance, that rates of generalization are similar between the two conditioning protocols and discuss the possible causes for this phenomenon.