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First published online May 24, 2005
Journal of Experimental Biology 208, 2045-2053 (2005)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2005
doi: 10.1242/jeb.01582

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Learning in two contexts: the effects of interference and body size in bumblebees

Bradley D. Worden^*, Ana K. Skemp and Daniel R. Papaj

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85710, USA

View larger version (15K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Apparatus. (A) Plan view of the apparatus. Bees entered the experimental arena via a transparent tunnel that could be closed. Video cameras (V) recorded activity at both the feeder and nest. (B) Plan view of the feeding and nest areas during phase 1 (single context) and phase 2 (dual context). During phase 1, three choices with three colors (green, blue, orange) were present at the feeder area and only one, background colored hole was present at the nest area. In phase 2, both feeder and nest had three choices cued by three different colors (green, blue, orange).

View larger version (19K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. First choice of color (A) at the feeder, and (B) at the nest. Graphs plot the proportion of bees (out of 30) that made the correct choice in each trial. The dashed line represents no choice or chance expectation (33%). Solid gray line divides phase 1 and 2. Phase 1 is represented by trials -8 to -1, and phase 2 by trials 1 to 8. The last eight trials are graphed from phase 1.

View larger version (12K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. First choice of a color at the feeder for control experiment. Graph plots the proportion of bees (out of seven) that made the correct choice in each trial. The solid line represents bees that were trained to only a single context (feeder) and the dashed line represents bees trained to two contexts (feeder + hive) during phase 2. The last five trials of phase 1 (-5 to -1) and the first five trials of phase 2 (1-5) are shown. Solid gray line divides phase 1 and 2. *Indicates significant difference (see text for statistics).

View larger version (18K): [in a new window]   Fig. 4. The proportion of landings at the feeder during the last two trials of phase 1 and the first two trials of phase 2. (A) Landings at either the color rewarding at the feeder (correct), color rewarding at the nest (nest), or color not rewarding in either context (other) for phase 1 (solid bars) and phase 2 (open bars). (B) Landing mistakes at the nest color (open bar) and other non-rewarding color (hashed bar).

View larger version (13K): [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Proportion of landings at the nest during phase 2. Colors choices were either rewarding at the nest (correct), rewarding at the feeder (feeder), or not rewarding in either context (other).

View larger version (9K): [in a new window]   Fig. 6. The relationship between head width (mm) and the number of correct first landings at the feeder during the initial eight trials. A total of 39 bees were tested.

View larger version (6K): [in a new window]   Fig. 7. Latency to expression of interference as measured by the trial in which a bee made a mistake at the feeder during phase 2 versus head width.