Presentation Details
Comparative Cognition in Bumblebees and Its Association with Gut Microbiomes

Smruti Pimplikar1, Nickole Villabona2, Kristal M Watrous2, Tobin J Hammer2, Felicity Muth1, 3.

1University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA.2University of California, Irvine, California, USA.3University of California, Davis, California, USA

Abstract


Cognitive traits can vary within species in an environment, likely due to trade-off with other traits and other cognitive abilities. Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are a useful system to study trade-offs since closely related individuals have distinct behavioral phenotypes with associated cognitive abilities. Foraging queens learn associations faster than workers, but it is unclear if this comes at the cost of flexibility. We compared behavioral flexibility of queen and worker bumblebees across two species, using a reversal learning paradigm. In an acquisition phase, B. flavifrons queens outperformed workers, however, B. vancouverensis showed no caste differences. Queens of both species outperformed workers across reversal trials but showed no difference in an unrewarded test. Our results suggest that queens’ strong learning performance does not hinder their ability to override learned associations. One hypothesis for this variation is the variation across the gut microbiomes which may impact cognition and behavior. We examined variation in gut microbiomes diversity and community composition across groups in association with their cognitive performance.

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