ArticlePloS one2012
No trade-off between learning speed and associative flexibility in bumblebees: a reversal learning test with multiple colonies.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Male bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) are more active and behaviourally flexible than workers.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Article
- Artificial selection for reversal learning reveals limited repeatability and no heritability of cognitive flexibility in great tits (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Great ape cognition is structured by stable cognitive abilities and predicted by developmental conditions.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Individual consistency in the learning abilities of honey bees: cognitive specialization within sensory and reinforcement modalities.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Assessing sex differences in behavioural flexibility in an endangered bird species: the Southern ground-hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri).Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Prior associations affect bumblebees' generalization performance in a tool-selection task.iScience · 2022Article
- No effect of dual exposure to sulfoxaflor and a trypanosome parasite on bumblebee olfactory learning.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Substantial variability in morphological scaling among bumblebee colonies.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- A model of resource partitioning between foraging bees based on learning.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Exploratory behaviour towards novel objects is associated with enhanced learning in young horses.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Multiple factors affect discrimination learning performance, but not between-individual variation, in wild mixed-species flocks of birds.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Mate assessment behavior is correlated to learning ability in female threespine sticklebacks.Current zoology · 2019Article
- Sex differences in color discrimination and serial reversal learning in mollies and guppies.Current zoology · 2019Article
- Heritabilities and co-variation among cognitive traits in red junglefowl.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- The quick are the dead: pheasants that are slow to reverse a learned association survive for longer in the wild.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Intra-individual variation in performance on novel variants of similar tasks influences single factor explanations of general cognitive processes.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- A possible structural correlate of learning performance on a colour discrimination task in the brain of the bumblebee.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Touch screen assays of behavioural flexibility and error characteristics in Eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).Animal cognition · 2017Article
- Fast learning in free-foraging bumble bees is negatively correlated with lifetime resource collection.Scientific reports · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Potential trade-offs between learning speed and memory-related performance could be important factors in the evolution of learning. Here, we test whether rapid learning interferes with the acquisition of new information using a reversal learning paradigm. Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) were trained to associate yellow with a floral reward. Subsequently the association between colour and reward was reversed, meaning bees then had to learn to visit blue flowers. We demonstrate that individuals that were fast to learn yellow as a predictor of reward were also quick to reverse this association. Furthermore, overnight memory retention tests suggest that faster learning individuals are also better at retaining previously learned information. There is also an effect of relatedness: colonies whose workers were fast to learn the association between yellow and reward also reversed this association rapidly. These results are inconsistent with a trade-off between learning speed and the reversal of a previously made association. On the contrary, they suggest that differences in learning performance and cognitive (behavioural) flexibility could reflect more general differences in colony learning ability. Hence, this study provides additional evidence to support the idea that rapid learning and behavioural flexibility have adaptive value.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.