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Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees

Flying insects like the honeybee learn multiple features of the environment for efficient navigation. Here we introduce a novel paradigm in the natural habitat, and ask whether the memory of such features is generalized to novel test conditions. Foraging bees from colonies located in 5 different hom...

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Autores principales: Bullinger, Eric, Greggers, Uwe, Menzel, Randolf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10025308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36950065
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1070957
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author Bullinger, Eric
Greggers, Uwe
Menzel, Randolf
author_facet Bullinger, Eric
Greggers, Uwe
Menzel, Randolf
author_sort Bullinger, Eric
collection PubMed
description Flying insects like the honeybee learn multiple features of the environment for efficient navigation. Here we introduce a novel paradigm in the natural habitat, and ask whether the memory of such features is generalized to novel test conditions. Foraging bees from colonies located in 5 different home areas were tested in a common area for their search flights. The home areas differed in the arrangements of rising natural objects or their lack, and in the existence or lack of elongated ground structures. The test area resembled partly or not at all the layout of landmarks in the respective home areas. In particular, the test area lacked rising objects. The search flights were tracked with harmonic radar and quantified by multiples procedures, extracting their differences on an individual basis. Random search as the only guide for searching was excluded by two model calculations. The frequencies of directions of flight sectors differed from both model calculations and between the home areas in a graded fashion. Densities of search flight fixes were used to create heat maps and classified by a partial least squares regression analysis. Classification was performed with a support vector machine in order to account for optimal hyperplanes. A rank order of well separated clusters was found that partly resemble the graded differences between the ground structures of the home areas and the test area. The guiding effect of elongated ground structures was quantified with respect to the sequence, angle and distance from these ground structures. We conclude that foragers generalize their specific landscape memory in a graded way to the landscape features in the test area, and argue that both the existence and absences of landmarks are taken into account. The conclusion is discussed in the context of the learning and generalization process in an insect, the honeybee, with an emphasis on exploratory learning in the context of navigation.
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spelling pubmed-100253082023-03-21 Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees Bullinger, Eric Greggers, Uwe Menzel, Randolf Front Behav Neurosci Behavioral Neuroscience Flying insects like the honeybee learn multiple features of the environment for efficient navigation. Here we introduce a novel paradigm in the natural habitat, and ask whether the memory of such features is generalized to novel test conditions. Foraging bees from colonies located in 5 different home areas were tested in a common area for their search flights. The home areas differed in the arrangements of rising natural objects or their lack, and in the existence or lack of elongated ground structures. The test area resembled partly or not at all the layout of landmarks in the respective home areas. In particular, the test area lacked rising objects. The search flights were tracked with harmonic radar and quantified by multiples procedures, extracting their differences on an individual basis. Random search as the only guide for searching was excluded by two model calculations. The frequencies of directions of flight sectors differed from both model calculations and between the home areas in a graded fashion. Densities of search flight fixes were used to create heat maps and classified by a partial least squares regression analysis. Classification was performed with a support vector machine in order to account for optimal hyperplanes. A rank order of well separated clusters was found that partly resemble the graded differences between the ground structures of the home areas and the test area. The guiding effect of elongated ground structures was quantified with respect to the sequence, angle and distance from these ground structures. We conclude that foragers generalize their specific landscape memory in a graded way to the landscape features in the test area, and argue that both the existence and absences of landmarks are taken into account. The conclusion is discussed in the context of the learning and generalization process in an insect, the honeybee, with an emphasis on exploratory learning in the context of navigation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC10025308/ /pubmed/36950065 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1070957 Text en Copyright © 2023 Bullinger, Greggers and Menzel. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Behavioral Neuroscience
Bullinger, Eric
Greggers, Uwe
Menzel, Randolf
Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title_full Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title_fullStr Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title_full_unstemmed Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title_short Generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
title_sort generalization of navigation memory in honeybees
topic Behavioral Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10025308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36950065
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1070957
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