ArticleBiology letters2019
Honeybees use absolute rather than relative numerosity in number discrimination.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. 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.
- Olfactory learning in two Amblypygi species Paraphrynus laevifrons and Phrynus pseudoparvulus.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- At the roots of Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD): Semantic processing and numerosity perception.PloS one · 2026Article
- The Social Relevance of Numbers: Insights from Animal Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Variability in cognitive strategies in a numerical discrimination task: individual and comparative insights from day-old domestic chicks (Gallus gallus).Journal of animal science · 2025Article
- The visual stimuli attributes instrumental for collective-motion-related decision-making in locusts.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Monkeys overestimate connected arrays in a relative quantity task: A reverse connectedness illusion.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- What, if anything, can be considered an amodal sensory dimension?Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Review
- Through an animal's eye: the implications of diverse sensory systems in scientific experimentation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Article
- Social learning and culture in bees: Simple mechanisms, complex outcomes.Journal of biosciences · 2024Review
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- Numerical discrimination in Drosophila melanogaster.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Information Theory Opens New Dimensions in Experimental Studies of Animal Behaviour and Communication.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Assessing the performance of brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) on the Mechner counting procedure.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- An insect brain organizes numbers on a left-to-right mental number line.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- A neural theory for counting memories.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Zebrafish excel in number discrimination under an operant conditioning paradigm.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- The evolution of quantitative sensitivity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review.Animal cognition · 2022Review
- Exploring Higher-Order Conceptual Learning in an Arthropod with a Large Multisensory Processing Center.Insects · 2022Article
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6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Various vertebrate species use relative numerosity judgements in comparative assessments of quantities for which they use larger/smaller relationships rather than absolute number. The numerical ability of honeybees shares basic properties with that of vertebrates but their use of absolute or relative numerosity has not been explored. We trained free-flying bees to choose variable images containing three dots; one group ('larger') was trained to discriminate 3 from 2, while another group ('smaller') was trained to discriminate 3 from 4. In both cases, numbers were kept constant but stimulus characteristics and position were varied from trial to trial. Bees were then tested with novel stimuli displaying the previously trained numerosity (3) versus a novel numerosity (4 for 'larger' and 2 for 'smaller'). Both groups preferred the three-item stimulus, consistent with absolute numerosity. They also exhibited ratio-dependent discrimination of numbers, a property shared by vertebrates, as performance after 2 versus 3 was better than after 3 versus 4 training. Thus, bees differ from vertebrates in their use of absolute rather than of relative numerosity but they also have some numeric properties in common.
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