Relative Reward Preference in Honey Bees
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
4-2025
Abstract
Honey bees are a unique model organism because individual bees make foraging decisions, but they must also work together to optimally support the needs of the colony as a “superorganism.” Research from other labs has shown that individual forager bees reject a smaller reward if they expected to find a large reward at the target. An unexplored question is how changing rewards at one location influences feeding at other foraging patches. For example, it would be interesting if shifting a feeder from 2.0 M sucrose to 1.0 M sucrose increased the foragers visiting a nearby feeder that always provided 1.0 M sucrose, since it suggests a preference not based on the absolute value of the reward but rather based on the relative reward history at all nearby foraging locations. Pilot data from our lab suggest that this is the case, however, there were discrepancies depending on whether the bees were trained on subsequent days or whether days were skipped. For this study we systematically controlled for number of days between training sessions.
Recommended Citation
Singh, Ravneek, "Relative Reward Preference in Honey Bees" (2025). Student Research Symposium 2025. 48.
https://digitalcommons.tamusa.edu/srs_2025/48
Comments
Poster Session 2
5:30-7:00 p.m.
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