Bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy (original) (raw)

Psychophysics

Nature volume 424, page 388 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Bees have an impressive cognitive capacity1,2,3,4, but the strategies used by individuals in solving foraging tasks have been largely unexplored. Here we test bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in a colour-discrimination task on a virtual flower meadow and find that some bees consistently make rapid choices but with low precision, whereas other bees are slower but highly accurate. Moreover, each bee will sacrifice speed in favour of accuracy when errors are penalized instead of just being unrewarded. To our knowledge, bees are the first example of an insect to show between-individual and within-individual speed– accuracy trade-offs.

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Figure 1: Bumblebees can choose wisely or rapidly, but not both at once.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, Würzburg, 97074, Germany
    Lars Chittka, Adrian G. Dyer, Fiola Bock & Anna Dornhaus
  2. Biological Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London, E1 4NS, UK
    Lars Chittka
  3. School of Orthoptics, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora, 3086, Victoria, Australia
    Adrian G. Dyer
  4. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UG, UK
    Anna Dornhaus

Authors

  1. Lars Chittka
  2. Adrian G. Dyer
  3. Fiola Bock
  4. Anna Dornhaus

Corresponding author

Correspondence toLars Chittka.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Chittka, L., Dyer, A., Bock, F. et al. Bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy.Nature 424, 388 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/424388a

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