Adaptive Strategies for Foraging and Their Implications for Flower Constancy, or: Do Honey Bees Multitask?
Classical experiments on honey bee time-memory showed that foragers trained to collect food at a fixed time of day return the following day with remarkable time-accuracy. Previous field experiments revealed that not all foragers return to a food source on unrewarded test days. Rather, there exist 2...
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| Format: | Others |
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Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University
2014
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| Online Access: | https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2322 https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3684&context=etd |
| Summary: | Classical experiments on honey bee time-memory showed that foragers trained to collect food at a fixed time of day return the following day with remarkable time-accuracy. Previous field experiments revealed that not all foragers return to a food source on unrewarded test days. Rather, there exist 2 subgroups: “persistent” foragers reconnoiter the source; “reticent” foragers wait in the hive for confirmation of source availability. To examine how these foragers contribute to a colony’s ability to reallocate foragers across sources with rapidly changing availabilities, foragers were trained to collect sucrose during a restricted window for several days and observed over 3 days throughout which the feeder was empty. In 2 separate trials, activity monitoring revealed a high level of activity apparently directed at other food sources. This “extracurricular” activity showed extensive temporal overlap with visits to the feeder, indicating that honey bees can manage at least 2 different overlapping time memories. |
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