Spatial learning: the birds and the bees do it differently

Abstract

Western honey bees, Apis mellifera , and rufous hummingbirds, Selasphorus rufus , are both central-place nectar foragers that navigate between patches of flowers. However, little is known about how these very different animals solve the same task. Their shared foraging ecology provides an opportunity to compare their spatial learning abilities using the same experimental paradigm. We compared the choices of honey bees and rufous hummingbirds in a one-trial spatial learning experiment in which one of four identical artificial flowers was rewarded. After a single visit (the sample phase), the birds were more successful at relocating the previously rewarded flower (the choice phase) than were the bees. In the choice phase, the bees were more likely to return to the first flower they had visited in the sample phase before flying to the rewarded flower whereas the hummingbirds were more likely to return directly to the rewarded flower. While these differences might reflect a difference in spatial memory, they are also consistent with the two species preferring to use spatial information in different ways. We suggest that both species remembered spatial information, but that the birds remembered the rewarded location while the bees remembered the flight route.