Quantity misperception by hymenopteran insects observing the solitaire illusion

Area of Science:

• Comparative psychology
• Invertebrate cognition
• Visual perception

Background:

• Visual illusions offer insights into animal perception and cognitive evolution.
• Invertebrate visual and cognitive processes are understudied.
• The Solitaire Illusion demonstrates how spatial clustering affects perceived numerosity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether invertebrates, specifically honeybees and wasps, perceive the Solitaire Illusion.
• To explore the evolution of perceptual mechanisms by comparing invertebrate and vertebrate responses to visual illusions.
• To determine if the Solitaire Illusion in insects is driven by numerical or spatial cues.

Main Methods:

• Training European honeybees (Apis mellifera) and European wasps (Vespula vulgaris) to discriminate dot quantities.
• Presenting trained insects with stimuli designed to elicit the Solitaire Illusion.
• Analyzing insect choices to assess their perception of numerosity and the illusion.

Main Results:

• Both honeybees and wasps successfully learned to discriminate between different quantities of dots.
• Insects demonstrated evidence of perceiving the Solitaire Illusion, misjudging quantities based on spatial clustering.
• The findings suggest that non-numerical spatial cues may influence numerosity perception in insects.

Conclusions:

• Invertebrates like honeybees and wasps are susceptible to the Solitaire Illusion.
• This perception in insects may involve both numerical and spatial processing.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms underlying this illusion in invertebrates.