Bumblebees: their behaviour and cognition

我在动物学习和认知方面的研究项目是基于对进化和生态学的考虑：它侧重于大黄蜂适应行为的机制。总的来说，这个领域之所以引起人们的兴趣，是因为大黄蜂物种正面临全球衰退，它们对作物授粉具有经济价值，而且它们在心理学中被用作理解认知及其神经基础的模型。我研究的主要目标是：(1)追踪大黄蜂从第一次离开他们的群体寻找食物到学习有效的觅食技能的行为轨迹。新手如何成为专家。我们的目标是揭示：(a)在它们体验到花香的奖励之前，它们是如何首先找到潜在的食物来源的——这是建立学习的基础。例如，我们将测试一个新的假设，即它们可能有以前未被发现的大小偏好，这取决于花的倾斜度（向上或向下）。我们还将讨论大黄蜂是如何以及为什么会被别人占据的花朵吸引的问题。(b)它们如何结合花的特征。例如，我们提出了一个新的假设，关于花卉向导如何利用一个基本的学习原理：为了最有效，他们不应该明确地标记花蜜或花粉的来源——他们只需要提供帮助蜜蜂自己寻找食物的方向。(c)它们如何结合重复的花卉暴露。例如，我们将研究蜜蜂如何学习对对称花的偏好，以及它们如何对花的类型进行分类。(2)扩大我们的应用研究，旨在(a)了解商业温室的觅食权衡，以提高授粉服务的成本效益；(b)通过跟踪物种分布的持续变化，为保护工作做出贡献。这项工作指明了花的结构和传粉者的信息处理系统相互利用的新途径。它纠正了心理学研究中的一种不平衡，即无脊椎动物的代表性仍然不足。它挑战了“大大脑”是分类等认知能力出现的先决条件的观点。它的中心是为我们自己提供宝贵生态服务的物种。拟议的研究与本科生和研究生的培养密不可分。

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.