Phantom alternatives influence food preferences in the eastern honey bee Apis cerana

1. Most models of animal choice behaviour assume that desirable but unavailable options, such as a high quality, but inhabited nest site, do not influence an individual’s preferences for the remaining options. However, experiments suggest that in mammals such ‘phantom’ alternatives can alter, and even reverse, an individual’s preferences for other items in a choice set. 2. Here we investigate the effect of phantom alternatives on feeder preferences in the eastern honey bee, Apis cerana. 3. First, we tested the effects of unattractive and attractive phantom by presenting individual bees with either a binary choice set containing two feeders that differed strongly in two qualities, but were equally preferred overall (‘the target’ and ‘the competitor’), or a trinary choice set containing the target, the competitor and one of two phantom types (unattractive and attractive). Second, we determined whether phantoms change preferences between the competitor and target by increasing preference t...1. 现有多数动物选择行为模型均假定，合意但不可得的选项（例如高质量但已被占据的巢址）不会影响个体对剩余选项的偏好。然而实验表明，在哺乳动物中，此类“幻影替代选项（phantom alternatives）”能够改变甚至逆转个体对选择集中其他选项的偏好。 2. 本研究旨在探究幻影替代选项对东方蜜蜂（Apis cerana）饲喂器偏好的影响。 3. 首先，我们通过向单个蜜蜂呈现两类选择集来测试无吸引力与有吸引力幻影选项的效应：一类为二元选择集（binary choice set），包含两个在两种属性上差异显著但整体偏好度相当的饲喂器（分别记为“目标项”与“竞争项”）；另一类为三元选择集（trinary choice set），包含目标项、竞争项以及两种幻影类型之一（无吸引力幻影与有吸引力幻影）。其次，我们通过提升偏好[原文此处截断为preference t...]以确定幻影选项是否会改变竞争项与目标项之间的偏好。