Bees trade off foraging speed for accuracy

Lars Chittka (), Adrian G. Dyer, Fiola Bock and Anna Dornhaus
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Lars Chittka: Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg
Adrian G. Dyer: Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg
Fiola Bock: Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg
Anna Dornhaus: Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Universität Würzburg

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6947, 388-388

Abstract: Abstract Bees have an impressive cognitive capacity1,2,3,4, but the strategies used by individuals in solving foraging tasks have been largely unexplored. Here we test bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in a colour-discrimination task on a virtual flower meadow and find that some bees consistently make rapid choices but with low precision, whereas other bees are slower but highly accurate. Moreover, each bee will sacrifice speed in favour of accuracy when errors are penalized instead of just being unrewarded. To our knowledge, bees are the first example of an insect to show between-individual and within-individual speed– accuracy trade-offs.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1038/424388a

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