Meeting Abstract
The results of recent studies with honeybees suggest that they are capable of learning relationships among colors and patterns. Relationship learning has been characterized in vertebrate species as abstract or conceptual learning. The traditional oddity problem was used here to investigate the discrimination of “same” and “different” geometric patterns. Free-flying bees were trained individually to visit a laboratory window for sucrose solution. In Experiment 1, honeybees were trained to discriminate the two patterns to be used in the oddity problem, black and white stripes and black and white concentric circles. For half of the bees, choice of stripes was correct and choice of circles was incorrect, and for the other half, the reverse. Correct choice was rewarded with sucrose and incorrect choice was punished with a stevia solution. The bees easily learned to discriminate the patterns and showed no preference for either. In Experiment 2, naïve honeybees were trained in the oddity task using the two patterns tested in Experiment 1. The bees were rewarded for choosing the odd stimulus from a set of three and punished for choosing either non-odd stimulus. Trials with two circle patterns and one stripe pattern were intermixed with trials with two stripe patterns and one circle pattern. Despite the difficulty of the problem, by the end of training, the bees chose the odd stimulus at a level greater than chance. This result suggests that they can learn to discriminate the “same” and “different” relationships in a set of three stimuli. It will be necessary in future studies to conduct a range of same-different discrimination problems with honeybees in order to understand the conditions that promote relational learning. It will be important as well to determine the conditions under which honeybees might use relational learning in foraging situations.
