Fig. 1. Conceptual framework for decision making that illustrates the processing stages for making a decision (left) and the application of this framework to the mechanisms of nest-site choice by a honeybee swarm (right). A sensory transformation takes primary sensory input and generates an internal representation of the alternatives, including a coding of their values. A decision transformation uses this sensory representation to build a distribution of evidence among the alternatives, with more evidence accumulating at the higher value alternatives. A final processing stage produces the actual decision, transforming the evidence distribution into a discrete choice of action. Adapted from Sugrue et al. (Sugrue et al., 2005).