No Trade-Off between Learning Speed and Associative Flexibility in Bumblebees: A Reversal Learning Test with Multiple Colonies
Figure 4
Correlation between initial learning speed and overnight retention of learned association for eighteen bumble-bee workers from a single colony.
Bees which were quick to learn to associate yellow as a predictor of high levels of floral reward have low t values. Overnight retention of this learned association was assessed by recording the percentage of yellow flowers chosen in an unrewarded choice test with both blue and yellow flowers (see Methods for details). On average, workers which learnt more quickly that yellow was a predictor of higher concentration sucrose solution rewards (had lower t values) in the initial learning phase were also likely to show a stronger learned preference for yellow in the overnight retention test (rs = −0.473, n = 18, p = 0.047).