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First published online March 2, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 987-993 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02124

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Do honeybees detect colour targets using serial or parallel visual search?

Johannes Spaethe^*, Jürgen Tautz and Lars Chittka

Beegroup, Biozentrum, Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, University of Würzburg, Germany

Author for correspondence at present address: School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road, Queen Mary, University of London, London E1 4NS, UK (e-mail: l.chittka{at}qmul.ac.uk)

Accepted 24 January 2006

In humans, visual search tasks are commonly used to address the question of how visual attention is allocated in a specific task and how individuals search for a specific object (`target') among other objects (`distractors') that vary in number and complexity. Here, we apply the methodology of visual search experiments to honeybees, which we trained to choose a coloured disc (target) among a varying number of differently coloured discs (distractors). We measured accuracy and decision time as a function of distractor number and colour. We found that for all colour combinations, decision time increased and accuracy decreased with increasing distractor number, whereas performance increased when more targets were present. These findings are characteristic of a serial search in primates, when stimuli are examined sequentially. We found no evidence for parallel search in bees, which would be characterized by a `pop out' effect, in which the slope of decision time (and accuracy) over distractor number would be near zero. Additionally, we found that decision time and number of errors were significantly higher when bees had to choose a blue target among yellow distractors compared with the inverse colour combination, a phenomenon known as search asymmetry in humans.

Key words: attention, visual cognition, colour vision, search asymmetries, foraging