The role of colour patterns for the recognition of flowers by bees (dataset)

Bees discriminate between many different colours of flower petals, but it is not well understood how they perceive and learn patterns frequently found in flowers with colourful structures. We used multispectral imaging to explore chromatic cues in concentric flower patterns as they are seen through the low-resolution eyes of a honeybee. We find a diversity of colour combinations, which suggests that plants could exploit the sensory capabilities of pollinators, like bees, that learn colours easily. A consistent feature is that the surround of the pattern has a stronger chromatic contrast to the foliage background than the centre. This could potentially serve as a feature filter for the fast identification of colours in a scene as flower objects during a forager’s approach. We also trained and tested bees with three types of concentric patterns. Bees recognised and discriminated them accurately in most tests relying flexibly on both chromatic and spatial cues. Only in few situations, depending on the training stimulus, chromatic cues dominated and pattern cues were ignored. The variability of floral designs and the bees’ flexibility in recalling colour and spatial information suggest a role for colour vision in pattern processing. Implications for the signalling strategies of flowers are discussed.