Meeting Abstract
In a novel conditioning procedure, we trained honey bees to push a cap to uncover a hidden food source (the cap pushing response or CPR). We have used this procedure to demonstrate a variety of conditioning effects such as greater resistance to extinction in bees given 12 training trials rather than 6, memory of cap pushing lasting at least 48 hours, discriminative punishment, and the effect of extended training and punishment. We have also discovered that the consumption of small amounts of aluminum affects the choice behavior in the CPR paradigm. We now turn our attention to whether a honey bee can learn the CPR behavior by watching another honey bee perform it. We trained several bees to the target where they consumed a sucrose syrup solution but were never trained to push the cap. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that several bees can approach the target at the same time. Thus, we created a natural situation where a trained bee would return to push the cap while other bees would be near the target. In the course of training several bees, we discovered that 16 bees learned to push the cap by watching a bee who had already learned to do so. 16 control animals who were trained to consume sucrose syrup from the sucrose well but not trained to push the cap failed to push the cap over a 30 min interval. These results are exciting as they represent the first time a honey bee has learned an arbitrary response through observation. This research was supported by NSF REU grant 1560389 and NSF PIRE grant 1545803 and performed at Skala Kalloni Greece.
