Title: | Cross-modal transfer in visual and nonvisual cues in bumblebees |
Author(s): | Harrap MJM; Lawson DA; Whitney HM; Rands SA; |
Address: | "School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, UK. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, UK. heather.whitney@bristol.ac.uk" |
Journal Title: | J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol |
DOI: | 10.1007/s00359-019-01320-w |
ISSN/ISBN: | 1432-1351 (Electronic) 0340-7594 (Print) 0340-7594 (Linking) |
Abstract: | "Bumblebees Bombus terrestris are good at learning to distinguish between patterned flowers. They can differentiate between flowers that differ only in their patterning of scent, surface texture, temperature, or electrostatic charge, in addition to visual patterns. As recently shown, bumblebees trained to discriminate between nonvisual scent patterns can transfer this learning to visually patterned flowers that show similar spatial patterning to the learnt scent patterns. Bumblebees can, therefore, transfer learnt patterns between different sensory modalities, without needing to relearn them. We used differential conditioning techniques to explore whether cross-modal transfer of learnt patterns also occurred between visual and temperature patterns. Bumblebees that successfully learnt to distinguish rewarding and unrewarding temperature patterns did not show any preferences for the corresponding unlearnt visual pattern. Similarly, bumblebees that learnt visual patterns did not transfer these to temperature patterns, suggesting that they are unable to transfer learning of temperature and visual patterns. We discuss how cross-modality pattern learning may be limited to modalities that have potentially strong neurological links, such as the previously demonstrated transfer between scent and visual patterns" |
Keywords: | "Animals Bees/*physiology *Cues Learning/*physiology Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology Temperature Bumblebees Cross-modality Floral temperature Pattern learning Spatial patterns;" |
Notes: | "MedlineHarrap, Michael J M Lawson, David A Whitney, Heather M Rands, Sean A eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Germany 2019/03/13 J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2019 Jun; 205(3):427-437. doi: 10.1007/s00359-019-01320-w. Epub 2019 Mar 11" |