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Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings

Are animals’ preferences determined by absolute memories for options (e.g. reward sizes) or by their remembered ranking (better/worse)? The only studies examining this question suggest humans and starlings utilise memories for both absolute and relative information. We show that bumblebees’ learned...

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Autores principales: Solvi, Cwyn, Zhou, Yonghe, Feng, Yunxiao, Lu, Yuyi, Roper, Mark, Sun, Li, Reid, Rebecca J, Chittka, Lars, Barron, Andrew B, Peng, Fei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9514845/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36164830
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78525
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author Solvi, Cwyn
Zhou, Yonghe
Feng, Yunxiao
Lu, Yuyi
Roper, Mark
Sun, Li
Reid, Rebecca J
Chittka, Lars
Barron, Andrew B
Peng, Fei
author_facet Solvi, Cwyn
Zhou, Yonghe
Feng, Yunxiao
Lu, Yuyi
Roper, Mark
Sun, Li
Reid, Rebecca J
Chittka, Lars
Barron, Andrew B
Peng, Fei
author_sort Solvi, Cwyn
collection PubMed
description Are animals’ preferences determined by absolute memories for options (e.g. reward sizes) or by their remembered ranking (better/worse)? The only studies examining this question suggest humans and starlings utilise memories for both absolute and relative information. We show that bumblebees’ learned preferences are based only on memories of ordinal comparisons. A series of experiments showed that after learning to discriminate pairs of different flowers by sucrose concentration, bumblebees preferred flowers (in novel pairings) with (1) higher ranking over equal absolute reward, (2) higher ranking over higher absolute reward, and (3) identical qualitative ranking but different quantitative ranking equally. Bumblebees used absolute information in order to rank different flowers. However, additional experiments revealed that, even when ranking information was absent (i.e. bees learned one flower at a time), memories for absolute information were lost or could no longer be retrieved after at most 1 hr. Our results illuminate a divergent mechanism for bees (compared to starlings and humans) of learned preferences that may have arisen from different adaptations to their natural environment.
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spelling pubmed-95148452022-09-28 Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings Solvi, Cwyn Zhou, Yonghe Feng, Yunxiao Lu, Yuyi Roper, Mark Sun, Li Reid, Rebecca J Chittka, Lars Barron, Andrew B Peng, Fei eLife Ecology Are animals’ preferences determined by absolute memories for options (e.g. reward sizes) or by their remembered ranking (better/worse)? The only studies examining this question suggest humans and starlings utilise memories for both absolute and relative information. We show that bumblebees’ learned preferences are based only on memories of ordinal comparisons. A series of experiments showed that after learning to discriminate pairs of different flowers by sucrose concentration, bumblebees preferred flowers (in novel pairings) with (1) higher ranking over equal absolute reward, (2) higher ranking over higher absolute reward, and (3) identical qualitative ranking but different quantitative ranking equally. Bumblebees used absolute information in order to rank different flowers. However, additional experiments revealed that, even when ranking information was absent (i.e. bees learned one flower at a time), memories for absolute information were lost or could no longer be retrieved after at most 1 hr. Our results illuminate a divergent mechanism for bees (compared to starlings and humans) of learned preferences that may have arisen from different adaptations to their natural environment. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9514845/ /pubmed/36164830 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78525 Text en © 2022, Solvi, Zhou et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Solvi, Cwyn
Zhou, Yonghe
Feng, Yunxiao
Lu, Yuyi
Roper, Mark
Sun, Li
Reid, Rebecca J
Chittka, Lars
Barron, Andrew B
Peng, Fei
Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title_full Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title_fullStr Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title_full_unstemmed Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title_short Bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
title_sort bumblebees retrieve only the ordinal ranking of foraging options when comparing memories obtained in distinct settings
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9514845/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36164830
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78525
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