Individual Learning Phenotypes Drive Collective Behavior Dataset

Variation
in individual cognition affects how animals learn about and communicate
information to others. We provide evidence that differences in how
individual honey bees learn influences the collective foraging dynamics
of a colony. By creating colonies of distinct learning phenotypes, we
evaluated how bees make foraging choices in the field. Colonies
containing individuals that learn to ignore unimportant information
preferred familiar food locations; however, colonies of individuals that
are unable to ignore familiar information visit novel and familiar
feeders equally. Colonies with a 50/50 mix of these phenotypes prefer
familiar food locations because individuals who learn the familiar
location recruit nestmates by dancing more intensely. Our results reveal
that cognitive variation among individuals nonlinearly shapes
collective behavioral outcomes.