Fast learning in free-foraging bumble bees is negatively correlated with lifetime resource collection.

ABSTRACT: Despite widespread interest in the potential adaptive value of individual differences in cognition, few studies have attempted to address the question of how variation in learning and memory impacts their performance in natural environments. Using a novel split-colony experimental design we evaluated visual learning performance of foraging naïve bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) in an ecologically relevant associative learning task under controlled laboratory conditions, before monitoring the lifetime foraging performance of the same individual bees in the field. We found appreciable variation among the 85 workers tested in both their learning and foraging performance, which was not predicted by colony membership. However, rather than finding that foragers benefited from enhanced learning pe

SUBMITTER: Evans LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5428240 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature