Different effects of reward value and saliency during bumblebee visual search for multiple rewarding targets.

ABSTRACT: Several animals, including bees, use visual search to distinguish targets of interest and ignore distractors. While bee flower choice is well studied, we know relatively little about how they choose between multiple rewarding flowers in complex floral environments. Two factors that could influence bee visual search for multiple flowers are the saliency (colour contrast against the background) and the reward value of flowers. We here investigated how these two different factors contribute to bee visual search. We trained bees to independently recognize two rewarding flower types that, in different experiments, differed in either saliency, reward value or both. We then measured their choices and attention to these flowers in the presence of distractors in a test without reinforcement. We fou

SUBMITTER: Nityananda V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8238720 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature