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Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees.

ABSTRACT: "Ecological intelligence" hypotheses posit that animal learning and memory evolve to meet the demands posed by foraging and, together with social intelligence and cognitive buffer hypotheses, provide a key framework for understanding cognitive evolution.^1-5 However, identifying the critical environments where cognitive investment reaps significant benefits has proved challenging.^6-8 Here, we capitalize upon seasonal variation in forage availability for a social insect model (Bombus terrestris audax) to establish how the benefits of short-term memory, assayed using a radial arm maze (RAM), vary with resource availability. Following a staggered design over 2 years, whereby bees from standardized colonies at identical life-history stages underwent cognitive testing before foraging in the wild, we found that RAM performance predicts foraging efficiency-a key determinant of colony fitness-in plentiful spring foraging conditions but that this relationship is reversed during the summer floral dearth. Our results suggest that the selection for enhanced cognitive abilities is unlikely to be limited to harsh environments where food is hard to find or extract,⁵^,^9-11 highlighting instead that the challenges of rich and plentiful environments, which present multiple options in short succession, could be a broad driver in the evolution of certain cognitive traits. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

SUBMITTER: Pull CD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9616731 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees.

Pull Christopher D CD Petkova Irina I Watrobska Cecylia C Pasquier Grégoire G Perez Fernandez Marta M Leadbeater Ellouise E

Current biology : CB 20220819 19

"Ecological intelligence" hypotheses posit that animal learning and memory evolve to meet the demands posed by foraging and, together with social intelligence and cognitive buffer hypotheses, provide a key framework for understanding cognitive evolution.<sup>1-5</sup> However, identifying the critical environments where cognitive investment reaps significant benefits has proved challenging.<sup>6-8</sup> Here, we capitalize upon seasonal variation in forage availability for a social insect model ...[more]

PMID: 35987212

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Project description:Foraging animals typically encounter opportunities that they either pursue or skip, but occasionally meet several alternatives simultaneously. Behavioural ecologists predict preferences using absolute properties of each option, while decision theorists focus on relative evaluations at the time of choice. We use European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to integrate ecological reasoning with decision models, linking and testing hypotheses for value acquisition and choice mechanism. We hypothesise that options' values depend jointly on absolute attributes, learning context, and subject's state. In simultaneous choices, preference could result either from comparing subjective values using deliberation time, or from processing each alternative independently, without relative comparisons. The combination of the value acquisition hypothesis and independent processing at choice time has been called the Sequential Choice Model. We test this model with options equated in absolute properties to exclude the possibility of preference being built at the time of choice. Starlings learned to obtain food by responding to four stimuli in two contexts. In context [AB], they encountered options A5 or B10 in random alternation; in context [CD], they met C10 or D20. Delay to food is denoted, in seconds, by the suffixes. Observed latency to respond (Li) to each option alone (our measure of value) ranked thus: LA≈LC<LB<<LD, consistently with value being sensitive to both delay and learning context. We then introduced simultaneous presentations of A5 vs. C10 and B10 vs. C10, using latencies in no-choice tests to predict sign and strength of preference in pairings. Starlings preferred A5 over C10 and C10 over B10. There was no detectable evaluation time, and preference magnitude was predictable from latency differentials. This implies that value reflects learning rather than choice context, that preferences are not constructed by relative judgements at the time of choice, and that mechanisms adapted for sequential decisions are effective to predict choice behaviour.

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Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees.

Publications

Ecology dictates the value of memory for foraging bees.

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