Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Volume 212, Issue 9, Pages 1344-1350Publisher
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.021881
Keywords
PER; classical conditioning; colour vision; honeybee; insect learning
Categories
Funding
- Graduate School 'Functional Insect Science' (DFG, Germany)
- DFG [1809/1-2]
- Royal Society, UK
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Colours are quickly learnt by free-moving bees in operant conditioning settings. In the present study, we report a method using the classical conditioning of the proboscis extension response (PER) in restrained honeybees (Apis mellifera), which allows bees to learn colours after just a few training trials. We further analysed how visual learning and discrimination is influenced by the quality of a stimulus by systematically varying the chromatic and achromatic properties of the stimuli. Using differential conditioning, we found that faster colour discrimination learning was correlated with reduced colour similarity between stimuli. In experiments with both absolute and differential conditioning, restrained bees showed poor colour discrimination and broad generalisation. This result is in strong contrast to the well-demonstrated ability of bees to finely discriminate colours under free-flight conditions and raises further questions about the temporal and perceptual processes underlying the ability of bees to discriminate and learn colours in different behavioural contexts.
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