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Bumblebees gain fitness through learning

Nigel E. Raine¹ & Lars Chittka¹

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1. Queen Mary University of London

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Date:

Received 06 November 2007 17:26 UTC; Posted 06 November 2007

Subjects:

Evolutionary Biology and Ecology

Tags:

• adaptive value
• associative learning
• flower colour
• foraging behaviour
• learning speed
• nectar collection

Abstract:

Despite the widespread assumption that the learning abilities of animals are adapted to the particular environments in which they operate, the quantitative effects of learning performance on fitness remain virtually unknown. Here we evaluate the learning performance of bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) from multiple colonies in an ecologically relevant associative learning task under laboratory conditions, before testing the foraging performance of the same colonies under the field conditions. We demonstrate that variation in learning speed among bumblebee colonies is directly correlated with foraging performance, a robust fitness measure, under natural conditions. Colonies vary in learning speed by a factor of nearly 5, with the slowest learning colonies collecting 40% less nectar than the fastest learning colonies. Such a steep fitness function suggests strong selection for higher learning speed in bumblebees. Demonstrating the adaptive value of differences in learning performance under the real conditions in which animals function represents a major step towards understanding how cognitive abilities of animals are tuned to their environment.

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This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

How to cite this document:

Raine, Nigel and Chittka, Lars. Bumblebees gain fitness through learning. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2007.1298.1> (2007)

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Other versions of this document elsewhere on the web

• 10.1098/rspb.2007.1652 (Peer Reviewed): Raine, N. E. and L. Chittka (2008). The correlation of learning speed and natural foraging success in bumble-bees. Proc. R. Soc. B,

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