Presentation Details
Comparing Cognitive Behavior in Social and Solitary Bees

Elizabeth Boshers, Beryl M.Jones.

University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Abstract


Social insects communicate via complex chemical signals, and insect sociality is broadly associated with greater investment in structures that detect and process those signals. If social evolution is a driver of cognitive complexity, then social insects are expected to also exhibit improved learning and memory of these chemical signals when compared to their solitary ancestors. Understanding the contributions of social evolution to cognitive complexity requires parsing out social effects from the effects of other life history factors, such as differences in foraging ecology, which are known drivers of insect cognitive evolution. To better understand the influence of social evolutionary history on insect cognition, we compared cognitive behavior performance between two closely-related halictid bee species, one which is social and one which is not. Importantly, both species are generalist foragers, overlapping in their distributions, use of floral resources, and seasonal activity patterns. We compared performance in both olfactory and visual associative learning tasks in these species to determine how social behavior may influence variation in cognitive behavior. 

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