Naïve and Experienced Honeybee Foragers Learn Normally Configured Flowers More Easily Than Non-configured or Highly Contrasted Flowers Howard, Scarlett, Dyer, AG, Garcia, JE, Giurfa, M, Reser, DH, Rosa, MGP and Avarguès-Weber, A 2021, Naïve and Experienced Honeybee Foragers Learn Normally Configured Flowers More Easily Than Non-configured or Highly Contrasted Flowers, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 9, pp. 1-13, doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.662336. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title Naïve and Experienced Honeybee Foragers Learn Normally Configured Flowers More Easily Than Non-configured or Highly Contrasted Flowers Author(s) Howard, Scarlett orcid.org/0000-0002-1895-5409 Dyer, AG Garcia, JE Giurfa, M Reser, DH Rosa, MGP Avarguès-Weber, A Journal name Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Volume number 9 Article ID ARTN 662336 Start page 1 End page 13 Total pages 13 Publisher Fronteris Media SA Place of publication Lausanne, Switzerland Publication date 2021-11-11 ISSN 2296-701X 2296-701X Keyword(s) APIS-MELLIFERA BEES bottom-up processing CATEGORIZATION COLOR DISCRIMINATION CONDITIONING PROCEDURE configural processing Ecology Environmental Sciences & Ecology FACE-LIKE STIMULI FLORAL SYMMETRY Life Sciences & Biomedicine PATTERN-DISCRIMINATION pollinator RECOGNITION Science & Technology spatial configuration top-down processing VISION visual learning Summary Angiosperms have evolved to attract and/or deter specific pollinators. Flowers provide signals and cues such as scent, colour, size, pattern, and shape, which allow certain pollinators to more easily find and visit the same type of flower. Over evolutionary time, bees and angiosperms have co-evolved resulting in flowers being more attractive to bee vision and preferences, and allowing bees to recognise specific flower traits to make decisions on where to forage. Here we tested whether bees are instinctively tuned to process flower shape by training both flower-experienced and flower-naïve honeybee foragers to discriminate between pictures of two different flower species when images were either normally configured flowers or flowers which were scrambled in terms of spatial configuration. We also tested whether increasing picture contrast, to make flower features more salient, would improve or impair performance. We used four flower conditions: (i) normally configured greyscale flower pictures, (ii) scrambled flower configurations, (iii) high contrast normally configured flowers, and (iv) asymmetrically scrambled flowers. While all flower pictures contained very similar spatial information, both experienced and naïve bees were better able to learn to discriminate between normally configured flowers than between any of the modified versions. Our results suggest that a specialisation in flower recognition in bees is due to a combination of hard-wired neural circuitry and experience-dependent factors. Language eng DOI 10.3389/fevo.2021.662336 Indigenous content off Field of Research 0602 Ecology 0603 Evolutionary Biology HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal Free to Read? Yes Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30160505 Document type: Journal Article Collections: Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment School of Life and Environmental Sciences Open Access Collection Related Links Link Description Link to full-text (open access)   Connect to Elements publication management system Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that permission has been obtained for items included in DRO. If you believe that your rights have been infringed by this repository, please contact drosupport@deakin.edu.au. Versions Version Filter Type Fri, 31 Dec 2021, 14:14:57 EST Fri, 31 Dec 2021, 14:52:36 EST Thu, 20 Jan 2022, 10:18:57 EST Thu, 20 Jan 2022, 16:38:12 EST Tue, 08 Mar 2022, 09:18:16 EST Tue, 08 Mar 2022, 14:38:39 EST Tue, 08 Mar 2022, 14:44:40 EST Tue, 08 Mar 2022, 14:53:25 EST Filtered Full Citation counts:   Cited 0 times in TR Web of Science Cited 0 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 17 Abstract Views, 0 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Thu, 20 Jan 2022, 10:18:57 EST