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An integrated look at decision-making in bees as they abandon a depleted food source

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Abstract

While there has been considerable research on the behavioral processes that underlie animals’ ability respond to shifting rewards, it remains unclear how animals coordinate multiple processes over time. To investigate this, we compared the behavior of honeybees (Apis mellifera) and bumblebees (Bombus impatiens), in an open-ended search task. Bees were given brief access to a high-quality food source, which then became non-rewarding. Then, over an extended period, we examined (1) bees’ tendency to persist at the depleted site, (2) their tendency to return to a different low-quality food source where they had been foraging previously, (3) their tendency to return to the hive, and (4) how previous reward history influenced their tendency to shift among these options. Compared to bumblebees, honeybees were much slower to abandon the depleted site and were much more likely to make trips to the hive while bumblebees were much more likely to return to the familiar low-quality site. These observed species differences are interpreted in terms of evolved individual and social differences between these species. We show evidence of well-studied behavioral processes such as extinction, negative contrast effects, and reliance on a social group, and provide, for the first time, a picture of how these processes interact with one another as part of a common sequential decision-making process.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our field assistants, Kim Maida, Mara Trudgen, Kourtney Trudgen, Lora Bramlett, Elizabeth Dean, and Jared Ruddick. We would also like to express our gratitude to Randolf Menzel, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their comments. Funding was provided by NSF (IGERT DGE 0114378).

Ethical and legal statement

The procedures described above and all care and handing of bees are in full compliance with the institutional guidelines for animal experimentation and with the laws of the United States.

Statement of disclosure

The authors have no financial relationship with the NSF, beyond the funding of the present study. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, 203 Natural Science Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1115, USA

    John M. Townsend-Mehler & Fred C. Dyer

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  1. John M. Townsend-Mehler
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  2. Fred C. Dyer
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Correspondence to John M. Townsend-Mehler.

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Communicated by M. Giurfa

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Townsend-Mehler, J.M., Dyer, F.C. An integrated look at decision-making in bees as they abandon a depleted food source. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66, 275–286 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1275-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1275-2

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