Acute stress modulates early visual perception and decision-making speed in bees

Affective states influence decision making but can also directly affect earlier stages of sensory processing. In humans, exposure to threatening stimuli alters the perception of basic visual features, fine-tuning vision to support faster responses in threatening contexts. Whether similar stressors induce changes in early vision in insects and affect visually guided decision making remains unknown. Here, we examined how stress, induced by a simulated predatory attack known to elicit a negative affective state, affects bumblebee vision and subsequent decision making. We examined the effect of this experience on sensitivity thresholds for two features of spatial vision, resolution and contrast, as well as bumblebee choice dynamics in a dual-choice discrimination task. We found that stress modulated both thresholds: it increased the contrast sensitivity threshold and shifted the spatial frequency threshold toward finer resolution. Stress also modulated subsequent choice behaviour, increasing commitment and accelerating decisions when early perceptual judgments were accurate. Importantly, these faster choices did not compromise accuracy. Collectively, our results suggest that experience of predation reshapes bee visual sensitivity and decision making not only through an increase in reactivity but also via a flexible shift in decision making driven by perceptual confidence.