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Proc Biol Sci

Title:		"Bumblebees distinguish floral scent patterns, and can transfer these to corresponding visual patterns"
Author(s):		Lawson DA; Chittka L; Whitney HM; Rands SA;
Address:		"School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK. Department of Experimental and Biological Psychology, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK sean.rands@bristol.ac.uk"
Journal Title:		Proc Biol Sci
Year:		2018
Volume:		285
Issue:		1880
Page Number:		-
DOI:		10.1098/rspb.2018.0661
ISSN/ISBN:		1471-2954 (Electronic) 0962-8452 (Print) 0962-8452 (Linking)
Abstract:		"Flowers act as multisensory billboards to pollinators by using a range of sensory modalities such as visual patterns and scents. Different floral organs release differing compositions and quantities of the volatiles contributing to floral scent, suggesting that scent may be patterned within flowers. Early experiments suggested that pollinators can distinguish between the scents of differing floral regions, but little is known about how these potential scent patterns might influence pollinators. We show that bumblebees can learn different spatial patterns of the same scent, and that they are better at learning to distinguish between flowers when the scent pattern corresponds to a matching visual pattern. Surprisingly, once bees have learnt the spatial arrangement of a scent pattern, they subsequently prefer to visit novel unscented flowers that have an identical arrangement of visual marks, suggesting that multimodal floral signals may exploit the mechanisms by which learnt information is stored by the bee"
Keywords:		Animals Bees/*physiology Flowers/*physiology Learning *Odorants *Olfactory Perception *Visual Perception crossmodal learning floral volatiles multimodal signal olfaction plant-pollinator interaction sensory modality;
Notes:		"MedlineLawson, David A Chittka, Lars Whitney, Heather M Rands, Sean A eng BB/M002780/1/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom England 2018/06/15 Proc Biol Sci. 2018 Jun 13; 285(1880):20180661. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0661"