Versace, E. 1, 2 , Bortot, M. 2 & Peruffo, S. 2
1 Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Queen Mary University of London
2 Center for Mind/Brain Science, University of Trento
From communication to action sequences and spatial navigation, extracting regularities is crucial to make sense of the environment. Abilities to process patterns of different complexity have been observed across different species of mammals and birds. Animal studies have hence clarified that statistical and abstract learning abilities are not restricted to language but widespread among vertebrate species. Open questions are (a) whether insects exhibit pattern learning abilities and (b) how the ability to extract pattern from the environment relate to communication. To address these issues, we focused on bees. Bees have already shown to be able to master concepts such as ?same? and ?different? in visual modality. Moreover, bee species differ in their communicative systems: honeybees but not bumblebees use the waggle dance to communicate. In spite of this, little is known on bees? capacities to extract patterns from other serially presented stimuli. We investigate the capacities of the honeybee Apis mellifera and the bumblebee Bombus terrestris to extract temporal patterns by discriminating between lights presented with different rhythms. We trained foragers to gain a sucrose reward by choosing a light presented with different temporal sequences and documented bees? capacity to solve this discrimination task, thus showing that pattern learning abilities are not restricted to vertebrates. Insects can shed light into the evolution of pattern learning, suggesting that these abilities have ancient roots in the evolution of the nervous systems.