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Summary: A new study shows that bumblebees learn socially, and this resulted in a novel behavior becoming dominant across a group. These findings highlight the opportunity going forward to use social insects to address how simple cognitive mechanisms can underpin the development of complex behavioral phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their natural environments, most animals must learn about multiple kinds of rewards, both within and across contexts. Despite this, the majority of research on animal learning involves a single reward type. For example, bees are an important model system for the study of cognition and its ecological consequences, but nearly all research to date on their learning concerns a single reward, nectar (carbohydrates), even though foragers often simultaneously collect pollen (protein). Features of learning under more ecologically realistic conditions involving multiple reward types are thus largely unexplored. To address this gap, we compared performance on a colour-learning task when floral surrogates offered bumblebees, Bombus impatiens , a single type of floral reward versus multiple, nutritionally distinct rewards. In one experiment, bees learned a floral association with nectar either alone or while simultaneously collecting pollen. In a reciprocal experiment, bees learned a floral association with pollen either alone or while simultaneously collecting nectar. Bees that collected pollen while learning about nectar did not suffer any detriment to learning which flower colour offered nectar. However, this was not the case for the reciprocal task: collecting nectar impaired bees' ability to learn and remember associations between floral colour and pollen. Our findings offer new insight into how bees learn in relation to ecologically realistic rewards and how cognitive constraints may shape their behaviour under ecologically realistic foraging scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress has complex effects on learning and memory, depending on both the type of stress and when the animal experiences it. Honeybees and bumblebees are agriculturally important pollinators for whom the effects of stress are extremely relevant. These pollinators are often transported long distances during which colonies experience severe physical disturbance, causing stress to individuals prior to their release for pollination. Under natural foraging conditions, bees are excellent at learning about the flowers they forage from, including associations between floral stimuli and rewards. However, it is not clear how stress might affect bees’ abilities to learn and remember floral features. Here we address the effects of acute stress on learning and memory in the bumble bee, Bombus impatiens . Using the Proboscis Extension Response (PER) protocol, we look at stress effects on learning and memory in three experiments. After being trained to a conditioned stimulus, we addressed: (1) the effect of 24 h and (2) 30 min of stress on the recall of this learned association and (3) the effect of stress on subsequently learning an association. We found that 24 h of stress after learning appeared to improve memory recall, and there was a trend in the same direction for 30 min of stress. However, bees that were stressed prior to learning an association did not differ from unstressed bees in their ability to learn or remember an association. Our finding that stress has effects on memory in the bumblebee could have implications for their use in behavioral experiments and for promoting the success of both managed and wild populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]