Research Center on Animal Cognition, Center for Integrative Biology, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Toulouse (UPS), Toulouse, France.
Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 4;7(1):4561. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-04919-8.
Workers of social insects, such as bees, ants and wasps, show some degree of inter-individual variability in decision-making, learning and memory. Whether these natural cognitive differences translate into distinct adaptive behavioural strategies is virtually unknown. Here we examined variability in the movement patterns of bumblebee foragers establishing routes between artificial flowers. We recorded all flower visitation sequences performed by 29 bees tested for 20 consecutive foraging bouts in three experimental arrays, each characterised by a unique spatial configuration of artificial flowers and three-dimensional landmarks. All bees started to develop efficient routes as they accumulated foraging experience in each array, and showed consistent inter-individual differences in their levels of route fidelity and foraging performance, as measured by travel speed and the frequency of revisits to flowers. While the tendency of bees to repeat the same route was influenced by their colony origin, foraging performance was correlated to body size. The largest foragers travelled faster and made less revisits to empty flowers. We discuss the possible adaptive value of such inter-individual variability within the forager caste for optimisation of colony-level foraging performances in social pollinators.
社会性昆虫（如蜜蜂、蚂蚁和黄蜂）的工蜂在决策、学习和记忆方面表现出一定程度的个体间可变性。这些自然认知差异是否转化为独特的适应性行为策略还知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了在人工花朵之间建立路线的熊蜂觅食者的运动模式的可变性。我们记录了在三个实验数组中测试的 29 只蜜蜂在 20 次连续觅食回合中执行的所有花朵访问序列，每个数组的人工花朵和三维地标具有独特的空间配置。所有蜜蜂在每个数组中积累觅食经验时，都会开始开发有效的路线，并且在路线保真度和觅食表现方面表现出一致的个体间差异，这些差异通过旅行速度和花朵重复访问的频率来衡量。虽然蜜蜂重复相同路线的趋势受到其群体起源的影响，但觅食表现与体型相关。最大的觅食者旅行速度更快，对空花的访问次数更少。我们讨论了这种觅食者群体内的个体间可变性在优化社会性传粉者的群体水平觅食表现方面的可能适应性价值。
