Evidence against a retinotopic-template matching in honeybees' pattern recognition

Currently two hypotheses exist as to how insects process visual images, as photograph-like 'retinotopic-templates', or as a set of features extracted by the visual system. Several results obtained in honeybees cannot be reconciled with a retinotopic-template matching. (i) Bees discriminated between two patterns that should not be distinguished according to the template hypothesis. (ii) Bees preferred patterns that showed no overlap with the assumed template to patterns that had such an overlap. (iii) Bees showed a generalization of properties of the rewarded pattern to other patterns. Thus, in our paradigm, the bees must have used additional mechanisms and cues for the processing and classification of patterns.