Cognitive tasks could be biased towards generalists: a lesson from wild non-eusocial bees

Area of Science:

• Behavioral ecology
• Cognitive evolution

Background:

• Ecological niches and cognitive abilities are linked in animals.
• Diet breadth correlates with learning and exploration in vertebrates, with generalists often outperforming specialists.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare associative learning and exploration in specialist and generalist bee species.
• To investigate the relationship between diet breadth, learning, and exploration in bees.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the free-moving proboscis-extension response (FMPER) task in a closed environment.
• Combined data with a published dataset for a broader species comparison.
• Employed phylogeny-informed generalized linear mixed models.

Main Results:

• Neither specialist nor generalist bees improved accuracy, but both learned to drink faster from rewards.
• Exploration, measured by drinking latency, decreased over time with no diet breadth effect.
• Specialist bees showed significantly lower participation rates and decreased participation over the task compared to generalists.

Conclusions:

• Specialist and generalist bees exhibit comparable associative learning abilities.
• Specialist bees may be more hesitant to engage with novel stimuli.
• Cognitive tasks need to accommodate diverse life history traits for equitable ability measurement.