Meeting Abstract
Our previous experiments with the cap pushing response (CPR) have all used appetitive conditioning. We now explore whether we could incorporate punishment into the CPR paradigm. Both food wells contain a 50% sucrose solution, but only one target was punished (cap or cross). Sixteen honey bees were selected from the laboratory feeder and randomly placed into one of two groups. In one group pushing a cross was punished with a 9 VDC shock and pushing a cap was not. In the other group pushing the cap was punished with a 9 VDC shock and pushing the cross was not. Each bee received 12 training trials in a simultaneous punishment situation in which both targets were presented. For half the bees the punished target was the cross, for the remaining 8 bees the punished target was the cap. The dependent variables were the number of shocks received and the proportion of bees landing on the unpunished target. The results indicated that as the 12 trials progressed, the proportion of bees selecting the unpunished target increased. By trials 11 and 12 no bee received punishment. Moreover, as the number of trials increased the number of shocks received by the bees decreased. Early in training, some bees received 4 and 5 shocks per trial as each push of the incorrect target resulted in a shock. Some bees had a position preference that had to be overcome before they would push the unpunished target. Our results show that punishment is effective in modifying the decisions of honey bees and was similar to what we previously found using a proboscis conditioning situation in harnessed forager bees. This research was supported by NSF REU grant 1560389 and NSF PIRE grant 1545803 and performed at Skala Kalloni Greece.
