ArticlePLoS biology2016
Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an Insect.
Article in PLoS biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 76 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bumble bees that follow a stricter routine innovate less: Foraging behaviors, environmental complexity, and how they relate to novel problem solving.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Leveraging insights from neuroscience to build adaptive artificial intelligence.Nature neuroscience · 2026Review
- Bee reasonable: Do bumblebees reason by exclusion?Learning & behavior · 2025Article
- Potential Tool Use by Wolves (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Experimental evidence for social learning in semi-natural, wild-type Norway rats.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Some Hooded crows (Corvus cornix) understand how a loose string works.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- An associative account of collective learning.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Bumblebee social learning outcomes correlate with their flower-facing behaviour.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Article
- Diversity of visual inputs to Kenyon cells of the Drosophila mushroom body.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Feathered Lectures-Evidence of Perceptual Factors on Social Learning in Kea Parrots (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Evidence for socially influenced and potentially actively coordinated cooperation by bumblebees.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Do They Know What They Are Doing? Cognitive Aspects of Rescue Behaviour Directed by Workers of the Red Wood AntLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Bumblebee Foraging Dynamics and Pollination Outcomes for Cherry Tomato and Pear Varieties in Northern China.Insects · 2024Article
- Social learning and culture in bees: Simple mechanisms, complex outcomes.Journal of biosciences · 2024Review
- Diversity of visual inputs to Kenyon cells of thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Ants combine object affordance with latent learning to make efficient foraging decisions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- The role of cognition in nesting.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Behavioural Indicators of Pain and Suffering in Arthropods and Might Pain Bite Back?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social insects make elaborate use of simple mechanisms to achieve seemingly complex behavior and may thus provide a unique resource to discover the basic cognitive elements required for culture, i.e., group-specific behaviors that spread from "innovators" to others in the group via social learning. We first explored whether bumblebees can learn a nonnatural object manipulation task by using string pulling to access a reward that was presented out of reach. Only a small minority "innovated" and solved the task spontaneously, but most bees were able to learn to pull a string when trained in a stepwise manner. In addition, naïve bees learnt the task by observing a trained demonstrator from a distance. Learning the behavior relied on a combination of simple associative mechanisms and trial-and-error learning and did not require "insight": naïve bees failed a "coiled-string experiment," in which they did not receive instant visual feedback of the target moving closer when tugging on the string. In cultural diffusion experiments, the skill spread rapidly from a single knowledgeable individual to the majority of a colony's foragers. We observed that there were several sequential sets ("generations") of learners, so that previously naïve observers could first acquire the technique by interacting with skilled individuals and, subsequently, themselves become demonstrators for the next "generation" of learners, so that the longevity of the skill in the population could outlast the lives of informed foragers. This suggests that, so long as animals have a basic toolkit of associative and motor learning processes, the key ingredients for the cultural spread of unusual skills are already in place and do not require sophisticated cognition.
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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.