Data from: Foraging bumblebees use social cues more when the task is difficult

When foraging in their natural environment, many animals readily complement their personal knowledge with additional social information. To balance the costs and benefits of copying others, animals have to discern situations in which it is more advantageous to use social rather than personal information. Here, we used foraging bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in a controlled laboratory setting and showed that the difficulty of a foraging task affects how the bees weight the two types of information. We used artificial flowers to devise easy and difficult discriminatory tasks, and tested the influence of floral and social cues on decision making. When facing an easy discrimination task, foraging bees were likely to rely on personal information and were only marginally affected by social information. By contrast, they prioritized social over personal information when flower discrimination was difficult and therefore the probability of making errors was higher. In summary, bees are able to use social and personal information to optimize foraging decisions in a flexible way.

在自然环境中觅食时，诸多动物会主动借助额外的社会信息（social information）补充自身的个人认知。为了权衡效仿同类的成本与收益，动物需要甄别那些使用社会信息比个人信息（personal information）更具优势的情境。本研究在受控实验室环境下开展实验，以觅食熊蜂（Bombus terrestris）为研究对象，结果表明觅食任务的难度会影响熊蜂对两类信息的权重分配。研究人员通过人工花卉设计了简单与困难的判别任务，并测试了花卉线索与社会线索对决策的影响。当面对简单判别任务时，觅食熊蜂更倾向于依赖个人信息，仅受社会信息的微弱影响；与之形成鲜明对比的是，当花卉判别任务难度较高、出错概率上升时，熊蜂会优先采用社会信息而非个人信息。综上，熊蜂能够灵活运用社会信息与个人信息，以优化觅食决策。