Bumblebees: their behaviour and cognition

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My research program in animal learning and cognition is grounded in considerations of evolution and ecology: it focuses on the mechanisms underlying adaptive behaviour in bumblebees. In general, this area is of interest because bumblebee species are facing global declines, they are of economic value for crop pollination, and they are used in psychology as models for understanding cognition and its neural basis. The principal goals of my research are: (1) To trace forward the behavioural trajectory from when bumblebees first leave their colony in search of food to learning of efficient foraging skills—i.e. how novices become experts. We aim to uncover: (a) How they get to potential sources of food in the first place, before they have experienced floral reward – this is the foundation on which learning is built. For instance, we will test the novel hypothesis that they may have previously undetected size preferences that depend on the inclination of the flower (up- or down-facing). We will also address the issue of how and why bumblebees seem to be attracted to flowers that are occupied by others. (b) How they integrate floral characteristics. For instance, we propose a novel hypothesis on how floral guides may exploit a basic learning principle: to be most effective, they should not mark the source of nectar or pollen explicitly—they need only provide directions that help the bees to discover food for themselves. (c) How they integrate repeated floral exposures. For instance, we will examine how bees learn a preference for symmetric flowers and how they classify flower types. (2) To expand our applied research, which is aimed at (a) Understanding foraging trade-offs in commercial greenhouses with a view to improving cost-effectiveness of pollination services and (b) Contributing to conservation efforts by tracking ongoing changes in species distributions. This work specifies new ways in which floral structure and the information-processing systems of their pollinators take advantage of each other. It redresses an imbalance in psychological research, where invertebrates remain under-represented. It challenges the view that “big brains” are pre-conditions for the emergence of cognitive abilities such as categorisation. It is centered on species that provide invaluable ecological services to our own. The proposed research is inextricably linked to the training of undergraduate and graduate students.