Deciding when to explore and when to persist: a comparison of honeybees and bumblebees in their response to downshifts in reward |
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Authors: | John M Townsend-Mehler Fred C Dyer Kim Maida |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, 203 Natural Science Building, East Lansing, MI 48824-1115, USA |
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Abstract: | As the distribution of food resources shifts over time, central place foragers are likely to be repeatedly faced with the
question of when to abandon a forage site that is declining in value and to subsequently search elsewhere. Although there
has been a great deal of investigation into how individual foragers allocate time between exploration and exploitation, few
studies have sought to explore this issue within a larger functional context. We take a comparative approach to this problem
by examining decision making in individual honeybees and bumblebees as they responded to a downshift in food reward. Our results
show not only that honeybees and bumblebees have significantly divergent strategies with regards to abandoning a food source
that is declining in value but also in terms of the subsequent tendency to seek an alternative food source. We interpret these
results in terms of both biological and social distinctions between these species and highlight how group-level characteristics
are likely to shape the evolutionarily derived foraging strategies of individual animals. |
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