Robert Théo, Tarapata Karolina, Nityananda Vivek
Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University, Henry Wellcome Building, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH UK.
Behav Ecol Sociobiol. 2024;78(2):22. doi: 10.1007/s00265-024-03432-z. Epub 2024 Feb 6.
The role of visual search during bee foraging is relatively understudied compared to the choices made by bees. As bees learn about rewards, we predicted that visual search would be modified to prioritise rewarding flowers. To test this, we ran an experiment testing how bee search differs in the initial and later part of training as they learn about flowers with either higher- or lower-quality rewards. We then ran an experiment to see how this prior training with reward influences their search on a subsequent task with different flowers. We used the time spent inspecting flowers as a measure of attention and found that learning increased attention to rewards and away from unrewarding flowers. Higher quality rewards led to decreased attention to non-flower regions, but lower quality rewards did not. Prior experience of lower rewards also led to more attention to higher rewards compared to unrewarding flowers and non-flower regions. Our results suggest that flowers would elicit differences in bee search behaviour depending on the sugar content of their nectar. They also demonstrate the utility of studying visual search and have important implications for understanding the pollination ecology of flowers with different qualities of reward.
Studies investigating how foraging bees learn about reward typically focus on the choices made by the bees. How bees deploy attention and visual search during foraging is less well studied. We analysed flight videos to characterise visual search as bees learn which flowers are rewarding. We found that learning increases the focus of bees on flower regions. We also found that the quality of the reward a flower offers influences how much bees search in non-flower areas. This means that a flower with lower reward attracts less focussed foraging compared to one with a higher reward. Since flowers do differ in floral reward, this has important implications for how focussed pollinators will be on different flowers. Our approach of looking at search behaviour and attention thus advances our understanding of the cognitive ecology of pollination.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00265-024-03432-z.
与蜜蜂做出的选择相比，视觉搜索在蜜蜂觅食过程中的作用相对较少受到研究。随着蜜蜂了解奖励情况，我们预测视觉搜索会被调整以优先关注有奖励的花朵。为了验证这一点，我们进行了一项实验，测试蜜蜂在训练初期和后期了解到不同奖励质量的花朵时，其搜索行为有何不同。然后我们又进行了一项实验，观察这种先前的奖励训练如何影响它们在后续不同花朵任务中的搜索。我们将检查花朵所花费的时间作为注意力的衡量指标，发现学习增加了对奖励的关注并减少了对无奖励花朵的关注。高质量的奖励导致对非花朵区域的关注减少，但低质量的奖励则没有。与无奖励花朵和非花朵区域相比，先前经历过低质量奖励也导致对高质量奖励有更多关注。我们的结果表明，花朵会根据花蜜的糖分含量引发蜜蜂搜索行为的差异。它们还证明了研究视觉搜索的实用性，并对理解不同奖励质量花朵的授粉生态学具有重要意义。
研究觅食蜜蜂如何了解奖励通常集中在蜜蜂做出的选择上（而较少研究蜜蜂在觅食过程中如何分配注意力和进行视觉搜索）。我们分析飞行视频以表征蜜蜂学习哪些花朵有奖励时的视觉搜索。我们发现学习会增加蜜蜂对花朵区域的关注。我们还发现花朵提供的奖励质量会影响蜜蜂在非花朵区域的搜索程度。这意味着与奖励较高的花朵相比，奖励较低的花朵吸引的觅食注意力较不集中。由于花朵在花蜜奖励方面确实存在差异，这对于传粉者对不同花朵的关注程度具有重要意义。因此，我们研究搜索行为和注意力的方法推进了我们对授粉认知生态学的理解。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s00265-024-03432-z获取的补充材料。
