Social insects like honeybees exhibit a surprising range of behaviors, from cooperatively building structurally complex nests (complete with built-in climate control) to practical division of labor within communities. . Biologists have traditionally viewed these behaviors as preprogrammed responses that evolved over generations in response to external factors. But two of his papers last week reported results indicating that social learning may also play a role.
The first study, published in PLoS Biology, showed that bumblebees can learn to solve simple puzzles by watching experienced mates.of number twoA paper published in the scientific journal Science describes a similar social behavior in how honeybees learn to perform their trademark “waggle dance” to tell other bees in the colony where to find food and other resources. reported evidence of learning. Taken together, both studies add to growing evidence of a sort of ‘culture’ among social insects like honeybees.
“Culture can be broadly defined as behaviors acquired through social learning and maintained within a population over time, essentially functioning as a ‘second form of inheritance’, although most research has focused on relatively large Primates, cetaceans, and passerines, which are species with brains.” Co-author Alice Bridges saida graduate student working at Queen Mary University in London Institute co-author’s Lars Titka“I particularly wanted to study bumblebees because they are perfect models for social learning experiments. It has been previously shown that it can also learn
Ever since Charles Darwin observed bumblebees performing “nectar-stealing” activities in 1884, scientists have recognized the amazing social learning abilities of bumblebee creatures. all kinds.evolutionary theory called baldwin effect Certain beneficial behavioral traits that an organism learns during its lifetime are said to be passed on to its offspring by natural selection.Thor Bridges othersWe decided to explore the possibility that social learning contributed to the unique behavioral innovation of bumblebees (Bombus Terrestris), not purely instinctive.
As previously reported, Chitka’s group 2017 survey It has been shown that bees can be trained to roll a small wooden ball and receive a reward. However, the group also noted instances where bees chose to roll the ball even when there was no apparent reward or benefit. rice field. A few bees walked over the ball or stopped on their way back from food to roll it. The group wondered if this was genuine play behavior.
Chitka’s lab Follow-up survey Last year, we reported observations of genuine play behavior in honeybees. This is a shot of rolling a small colored wooden ball. (Many animals are known to engage in play, but usually cerebral mammals and birds.) It strongly indicates that
The idea of using a two-option puzzle-box experiment to explore social learning arose from previous research: chimpanzee (2005) and great boobs (2015). For the bees, Chitka Institute designed a puzzle box that can be opened by rotating the clear lid, either by pressing the red tab clockwise or by pressing the blue tab counterclockwise. This allows the bees to collect a delicious reward of 50% sucrose solution.
The bee opens the puzzle box by pressing the red tab and rotating the box lid clockwise. Credit: AD Bridges and others.2023/CC-BY 4.0
Demonstrator bees were trained to perform one of the two solution behaviors and then added to a group of untrained bees. All bees were allowed to forage freely among the puzzle boxes, and their behavior was monitored so that demonstrator bees repeatedly “solved” the puzzle boxes until their behavior changed the group’s behavior. Checked to see if it spread to the rest. There was also a control group with no demonstrator bees.
“We wanted to see if bumblebees could learn new, unnatural behaviors through social learning under open diffusion conditions.” bridges said“We were particularly interested in whether we could learn variations of this behavior that are inherent in trained demonstrators in the same way that these larger-brained species do.”
That’s exactly what happened. Foraging bees in colonies with demonstrator bees opened significantly more puzzle boxes than control bees and used ‘taught’ solutions 98% of the time. This suggests that the behavior was socially learned.In follow-up experiments with multiple bees, each taught a different solution to the puzzle, untrained bees first tried both methods. but over time, like popular fads and trends, preferences for one or the other developed randomly.
Of the two control colonies, only one bee learned how to open the puzzle box. We can say that they are “voluntary learners”, but their ability to do so is low, and they have opened far fewer boxes than the bees in the colony with the demonstrator. A longer-running second-round experiment yielded a few spontaneous learners, who also had lower proficiency. However, one of his spontaneously learning bees was overkill, as he recorded 216 box openings during the course of the experiment. His closest rival in the control group, he opened only 22 boxes in the same period. In contrast, the trained demonstrator bees were foraging experts, regularly opening over 100 puzzle boxes each day.
This finding is consistent with previous studies on chimpanzees and tits, where the authors argued that such social learning indicates cultural competence in those species. “Bumblebees are not known to exhibit culture-like phenomena in the wild.” bridges said“Yet our bees seem to have been able to do this. We were also surprised at how flexible and innovative bumblebee behavior really was. We were surprised to see some bees opening the box on their own.” The fact that we have learned is truly amazing and definitely suggests that honeybees may come and catch up with other new behaviors in the wild as the opportunity and need arises.”
Further research into bumblebee nectar-scavenging behavior may shed more light on the underlying mechanisms. But is this socially-learned behavior passed on to the next generation? “While the bumblebees in our experiment form colonies that last a single biological generation before decaying, honeybees, stingless bees, and some Tropical bumblebees form colonies that last for years.” bridges said“If a naturally occurring, long-lasting culture were to be found in an invertebrate, it would likely be here.”
waggle waggle
A bee performs a gesture dance. Credit: Shihao Dong et al., 2023
Therefore, a second study is carried out. swing dance “We are beginning to understand that animals, like us, can pass on information critical to their survival through communities and families.” James Nee said Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, co-author of this study. “Our new research shows that such social learning can be extended to include insects. We know that honeybees are highly intelligent and capable of doing amazing things.”
Bees use the waggle dance to tell other bees where to find important resources such as food, water, tree resin, and nest locations. It has to be shaken and is done at a very fast pace. A bee can travel the length of her whole body in less than a second. The longer the woggle run, the longer the distance, and the woggle direction angle indicates the direction. The quality of the resource in question is encoded in the number of repetitions of the waggle run and how quickly each dancing bee returns to repeat the next run.
parney othersAlthough there is a strong genetic component to bee waggle dancing behavior, the team hypothesized that novice dancers could learn from experienced waggle dancers to improve their communication skills with fellow bees. Workers begin tracking waggle-dancing foragers at about eight days of age, and begin dancing themselves at 12 days, usually following the same “routine” as the old bees they shadowed. othersThey thought that the first early waggle dance would increase communication errors if the bees were reared unable to follow older dancers. Mixed control colonies with older experienced bee dancers were monitored for the emergence of hip-wagging dance behavior.
The results supported their hypothesis. The bees’ initial waggle dance, which failed to chase the older, more experienced forager bees, was riddled with errors regarding the direction and distance of the precious resource. Bees in mixed-control colonies gained valuable social cues by following experienced dancers, so their initial dances were much more accurate. That social knowledge stayed with them throughout their lives.
Essentially, untrained bees have developed their own distant dialect. “Scientists believe that bee dialects are shaped by the local environment.” nie said“If so, it makes sense that the colonies would transmit dialects that were well adapted to this environment.” It is believed that this suggests that cognitive learning shapes signal transduction in honeybees.
“It is at least plausible that there could be local ‘cultures’ of nuanced, socially acquired dance languages that depend on the visual characteristics of the landscape and the spatial distribution of food sources,” he said. Titka and Natasha Rossi (at the University of Sussex in Brighton) It is written in the attached explanation. They are 2008 survey Show that one species of bee has learned to read another species’ distance codes and chitkas othersAn original study of playful ball-rolling in bees. “Thus, some of their most advanced behavioral innovations (including elements of dance language) emerged, at least in part, from individual innovation and subsequent social learning, becoming instinctive later in evolution. There is a possibility.”
DOI: Science, 2023. 10.1126/science.ade1702 (About DOIs).
DOI: PLoS Biology, 2023. 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019 (About DOIs).
