Social learning: public information in insects (original) (raw)
Related papers
Social learning in insects--from miniature brains to consensus building
Current Biology, 2007
Communication and learning from each other are part of the success of insect societies. Here, we review a spectrum of social information usage in insects -from inadvertently provided cues to signals shaped by selection specifically for information transfer. We pinpoint the sensory modalities involved and, in some cases, quantify the adaptive benefits. Well substantiated cases of social learning among the insects include learning about predation threat and floral rewards, the transfer of route information using a symbolic 'language' (the honeybee dance) and the rapid spread of chemosensory preferences through honeybee colonies via classical conditioning procedures. More controversial examples include the acquisition of motor memories by observation, teaching in ants and behavioural traditions in honeybees. In many cases, simple mechanistic explanations can de identified for such complex behaviour patterns.
The dynamics of social learning in an insect model, the bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2007
Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) are attracted to those particular inflorescences where other bees are already foraging, a process known as local enhancement. Here, we use a quantitative analysis of learning in a foraging task to illustrate that this attraction can lead bees to learn more quickly which flower species are rewarding if they forage in the company of experienced conspecifics. This effect can also be elicited by model bees, rather than live demonstrators. We also show that local enhancement in bumblebees most likely reflects a general attraction to conspecifics that is not limited to a foraging context. Based on the widespread occurrence of both local enhancement and associative learning in the invertebrates, we suggest that social influences on learning in this group may be more common than the current literature would suggest and that invertebrates may provide a useful model for understanding how learning processes based on social information evolve.
Social learning in noncolonial insects?
Current Biology, 2005
Learning about predators or predation risk from others may provide low-cost life-saving information and would be expected to have adaptive payoffs in any species where conspecifics are observable and behave differently under predation risk. Yet, social learning and social-information use in general have been largely restricted to vertebrates ([1-3, 5, 7-9], but see [10-16]). Here, we show that crickets adapt their predatoravoidance behavior after having observed the behavior of knowledgeable others and maintain these behavioral changes lastingly after demonstrators are gone. These results point toward social learning, a contingency never shown before in noncolonial insects. We show that these long-lasting changes cannot instead be attributed to long re-emergence times, long-lasting effects of alarm pheromones, or residual odor cues. Our findings imply that social learning is likely much more phylogenetically widespread than currently acknowledged and that reliance on social information is determined by ecological rather than taxonomic constrains [17, 18], and they question the generally held assumption that social learning is restricted to large-brained animals assumed to possess superior cognitive abilities.
Psyche: A Journal of Entomology, 2013
Social learning occurs when one individual learns from another, mainly conspecific, often by observation, imitation, or communication. Using artificial flowers, we studied social learning by allowing test bumblebees to (a) see dead bumblebees arranged in foraging positions or (b) watch live bumblebees actually foraging or (c) communicate with nestmates within their colony without having seen foraging. Artificial flowers made from 1.5 mL microcentrifuge tubes with closed caps were inserted through the centres of blue 7 cm plastic discs as optical signals through which the bees could not forage. The reinforcer reward syrup was accessible only through holes in the sides of the tubes beneath the blue discs. Two colonies (A and B) were used in tandem along with control (C and D) colonies. No bee that was not exposed (i.e., from the control colonies (C and D)) to social learning discovered the access holes. Inside colony B, we imprisoned a group of bees that were prevented from seeing or watching. Bees that saw dead bumblebees in foraging positions, those that watched nest-mates foraging, and those that had only in-colony communication with successful foragers all foraged successfully. The means of in-colony communication are not understood and warrant intense investigation.
Bumble-bees learn the value of social cues through experience
Biology letters, 2009
Natural selection should lead animals to use social cues (SC) when they are useful, and disregard them when they are not. Theoretical investigation predicts that individuals should thus employ social learning 'strategies', but how might such context specificity be achieved on a proximate level? Operant conditioning, whereby the use of SC is reinforced through rewarding results, provides a potential mechanism. We investigate the role of reinforcement in joining behaviour in bumble-bees, Bombus terrestris. When bees visit unfamiliar flower species, they prefer to probe inflorescences where others are also foraging, and here we show that such behaviour is promoted through experience when conspecific presence reliably predicts reward. Our findings highlight a straightforward, but rarely discussed, mechanism by which animals can be selective about when to use SC.
PLoS ONE, 2014
Background: Bumblebees use information provided inadvertently by conspecifics when deciding between different flower foraging options. Such social learning might be explained by relatively simple associative learning mechanism: the bee may learn to associate conspecifics with nectar or pollen reward through previous experience of foraging jointly. However, in some studies, observers were guided by choices of 'demonstrators' viewed through a screen, so no reward was given to the observers at the time of seeing other bees' flowers choice and no demonstrator bee was present at the moment of decision. This behaviour, referred to observational conditioning, implies an additional associative step as the positive value of conspecific is transferred to the associated flower. Here we explore the role of demonstrator movement, and the distance between observers and demonstrators that is required for observation conditioning to take place.
Social learning of floral odours inside the honeybee hive
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2005
A honeybee hive serves as an information centre in which communication among bees allows the colony to exploit the most profitable resources in a continuously changing environment. The best-studied communication behaviour in this context is the waggle dance performed by returning foragers, which encodes information about the distance and direction to the food source. It has been suggested that another information cue, floral scents transferred within the hive, is also important for recruitment to food sources, as bee recruits are more strongly attracted to odours previously brought back by foragers in both honeybees and bumble-bees. These observations suggested that honeybees learn the odour from successful foragers before leaving the hive. However, this has never been shown directly and the mechanisms and properties of the learning process remain obscure. We tested the learning and memory of recruited bees in the laboratory using the proboscis extension response (PER) paradigm, and show that recruits indeed learn the nectar odours brought back by foragers by associative learning and retrieve this memory in the PER paradigm. The associative nature of this learning reveals that information was gained during mouth-to-mouth contacts among bees (trophallaxis). Results further suggest that the information is transferred to long-term memory. Associative learning of food odours in a social context may help recruits to find a particular food source faster.
Animal Behaviour, 2014
Social learning is a widespread phenomenon allowing animals to use information provided by other animals when presented with a novel situation. A number of recent studies suggest that nonspecific Pavlovian conditioning may explain some forms of social learning, so that animals simply learn to use the presence of conspecifics as a predictor of reward. In this study, we investigated the conditions of flower choice copying behaviour in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. We raised bumblebees in controlled laboratory conditions to compare the social learning performance of bees with different previous associative experiences. We investigated the influence of foraging experience with conspecifics on transferring the preference for a socially indicated flower type to flowers of the same species not occupied by conspecifics. Observers that had the opportunity to associate conspecifics with rewarding flowers instantly acquired the social flower preference and equally visited occupied and unoccupied flowers of the socially indicated flower type (stimulus enhancement). Such usage of social cues requires prior experience with live conspecifics (bees familiarized only with inanimate model bees did not display the same generalization from socially indicated flowers to other flowers of the same type). By contrast, nonsocial cues and immobile model bees, even if they had been previously associated with rewarding flowers, resulted in a wholly different pattern of preference, where observers preferred only those individual flowers with the nonsocial cue or model bee attached (local enhancement). This difference suggests a special salience of live social cues as information providers and results in different patterns of associative learning than nonsocial cues.