Bortot Maria, Vallortigara Giorgio
Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto, Italy.
iScience. 2023 Sep 27;26(10):108035. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108035. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.
Honeybees can estimate quantities having different dimensions: continuous and uncountable such as the relative size of visual objects in an array, or discrete and countable such as the number of objects of the array. Honeybees can transfer quantity discrimination (i.e., choosing the larger/smaller stimulus) from number to size. Here, we investigated whether honeybees could also generalize from the size (continuous) to the number (discrete) dimension. We trained free-flying foragers to discriminate between large- and small-size elements. At test, bees were presented with a comparison between larger and smaller numerosities controlled for different continuous variables covarying with numerosity such as total area, total perimeter, convex hull, and element size. Results showed that bees generalized from the size to the numerical dimension of the stimuli. This cross-dimensional transfer supports the idea of a universal mechanism for the encoding of abstract magnitudes in invertebrate species comparable to that of vertebrate species.
连续且不可数的，比如数组中视觉对象的相对大小；或者离散且可数的，比如数组中对象的数量。蜜蜂能够将数量辨别（即选择更大/更小的刺激）从数字维度转移到大小维度。在此，我们研究了蜜蜂是否也能从大小（连续）维度推广到数字（离散）维度。我们训练自由飞行的觅食蜜蜂区分大尺寸和小尺寸的元素。在测试中，向蜜蜂呈现的是在较大和较小数量之间的比较，这些数量针对与数量相关的不同连续变量进行了控制，例如总面积、总周长、凸包和元素大小。结果表明，蜜蜂从刺激的大小维度推广到了数字维度。这种跨维度转移支持了这样一种观点，即与脊椎动物物种类似，无脊椎动物物种中存在一种用于编码抽象量值的通用机制。
