Data for 'Bumblebees Learn a Relational Rule but Switch to a Win-Stay/Lose-Switch Heuristic After Extensive Training'

Mapping animal performance in a behavioral task to underlying cognitive mechanisms and strategies is rarely straightforward, since a task may be solvable in more than one manner. Here, we show that bumblebees perform well on a concept-based visual discrimination task, but spontaneously switch from a concept-based solution to a simpler heuristic with extended training, all while continually increasing performance. Bumblebees were trained in an arena to find reward on displays with shapes of different sizes where they could not use low-level visual cues. One group of bees was rewarded at displays with bigger shapes and another group at displays with smaller shapes. Analysis of total choices shows bees increased their performance over 30 bouts to above chance. However, analyses of first and sequential choices suggest that after approximately 20 bouts, bumblebees changed to a win-stay/lose-switch strategy. Comparing bees’ behavior to a probabilistic model based on a win-stay/lose-switch strategy further supports the idea that bees changed strategies with extensive training. Analyses of unrewarded tests indicate bumblebees learned and retained the concept of relative size even after they had already switched to a win-stay, lost-shift strategy. We propose that the reason for this strategy switching may be due to cognitive flexibility and efficiency.

将动物在行为任务中的表现映射至其潜在的认知机制与策略，往往并非易事，因为一项任务可能以多种方式得以解决。在本研究中，我们发现蜜蜂数据集在基于概念的可视辨别任务上表现出色，但随着训练时间的延长，它们会自发地从基于概念的解决方案切换至更为简单的启发式策略，而在此过程中，其表现能力持续提升。蜜蜂在训练场中接受训练，以寻找不同形状大小的显示屏上的奖励，在此过程中，它们无法利用低级视觉线索。一组蜜蜂在较大形状的显示屏上获得奖励，而另一组则在较小形状的显示屏上获得奖励。总体选择分析表明，蜜蜂在30次回合中提升了其表现，超越了随机水平。然而，对首次选择和后续选择的进一步分析表明，在大约20次回合之后，蜜蜂转变为了“赢则维持，输则转换”的策略。将蜜蜂的行为与基于‘赢则维持，输则转换’策略的概率模型进行比较，进一步证实了蜜蜂在经过大量训练后改变了策略的观点。未获得奖励的测试分析表明，即使蜜蜂已经切换到‘赢则维持，输则转换’策略，它们仍然能够学习并保留相对大小的概念。我们提出，这种策略转换的原因可能是认知的灵活性与效率。