Strategies of the honeybee Apis mellifera during visual search for vertical targets presented at various heights: a role for spatial attention?

ABSTRACT: When honeybees are presented with a colour discrimination task, they tend to choose swiftly and accurately when objects are presented in the ventral part of their frontal visual field. In contrast, poor performance is observed when objects appear in the dorsal part. Here we investigate if this asymmetry is caused by fixed search patterns or if bees can use alternative search mechanisms such as spatial attention, which allows flexible focusing on different areas of the visual field. We asked individual honeybees to choose an orange rewarded target among blue distractors. Target and distractors were presented in the ventral visual field, the dorsal field or both. Bees presented with targets in the ventral visual field consistently had the highest search efficiency, with rapid decisions, high

SUBMITTER: Morawetz L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4168805 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature