Meeting Abstract
Like honeybees, bumblebees use resource quality information from previous floral encounters to help inform future foraging decisions – with a demonstrated ability to select for resources whose sensory characteristics are associated with a food reward. While bumblebees learn and select for flower color, floral odors also appear to play a meaningful role in foraging behavior. Our prior work showed that olfactory pollution has a negative effect on bumblebee foraging behavior in a laboratory study that utilized two representative agrochemical odors. This small stimulus set indicated that olfactory pollution can impact behavior, but did not allow us to determine if the structural relationship of the contaminating odor signal relative to the original associative scent drove the observed behavioral changes. This begets the question, does the level of structural similarity between the associative (A) and contaminating (B) odors impact the likelihood of disrupting olfactory association? While there is minimal data on this topic in restrained bees, it remains largely unexplored in freely foraging bumblebees. Our current work trains bumblebees to associate a natural floral odor blend with a nectar reward in a single foraging chamber. After the association period, that chamber is then periodically replaced with two chambers, allowing bees to choose between one scented with A, the other scented with A+B. We use a range of polluting odors across trials to provide a varying degree of chemical structural similarity to odor-blend A. Automated tracking of foragers allows us to analyze preferences of individuals. Preliminary data indicate that individual bumblebees can preferentially forage. Interestingly, early analysis suggests that spatial memory may override olfactory association in some bees.
