Pollinator cognition in a plant network

Cognitive abilities evolve within the context of ecological communities. Honeybees and bumblebees have become model systems for cognitive ecology; but pollination is performed by a diverse group of insects under similar pressures to forage efficiently in a mixed floral community. We studied the colour learning abilities of six species of Hymenoptera (two eusocial bumblebees, a cuckoo bumblebee, two wasps, and a leaf-cutter bee) within the context of an island plant community. We used records of insect visits to flowers in the field to determine the index of specialization of each species in the island plant-pollinator network, and measured the spectral reflectance of the flowers they visit. Species with higher specialization indices in our plant-pollinator network made a larger proportion of correct choices in a colour learning task than more generalist species. The more generalist species also visited a group of flowers more similar to each other in Hymenopteran colour vision space. Th..., (a) Plant-pollinator network
This study was conducted at the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island, an 80-hectare island in New Brunswick, Canada. Kent Island is 32 km to the closest mainland in Cutler, Maine, 5km from the closest larger island of Whitehead NB, and 8km to the larger island of Grand Manan, NB. In June and July of 2019, 2022, and 2023 one to two researchers collected insects when they were observed visiting flowering plants across the island. Across all three collection years insects were identified to the lowest taxonomic group possible using keys and by posting photos on iNaturalist. Tissues from a subset of 95 insects from 2022 were submitted to the Canadian Center for DNA barcoding for identification using the CO1 barcoding region (BOLD Project \"Identifying Insect Flower Visitors in Plant Pollinator Network on Kent Island, New Brunswick Canada\").
We used the ‘bipartite’ package [28] in R to visualize the plant-pollinator network and calculate indices of specializ..., # Pollinator Cognition in a Plant Network

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wtm](10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wtm)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset consists of three components: a plant-pollinator network, floral reflectance measurements, and a learning experiment.

### Files and variables

#### File: Dprime\_Values\_From\_Network.csv

**Description:** This is the d'prime value of specialization determined for the network organized so it can be used for further analyses

##### Variables

* species: insect species
* dprime: d' value calculated for that species from the plant-pollinator network
* d: d value calculated for that species from the plant-pollinator network
* dmin: dmin value calculated for that species from the plant-pollinator network
* dmax: dmax value calculated for that species from the plant-pollinator network
* color_dprime: d' value calculated for that species from the plant-pollinator network when the network was created using plant colours instead ...,