Food’s odor learning in Tetragonisca angustula stingless bee

MC CABE, SOFIA I.; FARINA, WALTER M.

Colonia del Sacramento

Congreso; 1 st Latin American Meeting of Chemical Ecology; 2010

Asociación latinoamericana de Ecología Química

Tetragonisca angustula stingless bees present a wide-spread distribution in Latin America from southern Mexico to the northern part of Argentina. They have been catalogued as poor recruiters and as solitary foragers who, in their orientation towards a food source, use chemical cues left by co-specifics and visual cues of co-specifics or landmarks but lack sophisticated communication strategies to inform a food source’s location. To assess the relevance of the food´s odor in their foraging strategies we investigated their ability to learn the association between odors and reward (sugar solution), and the effect on learning of previous encounters with scented food either inside the hive or during foraging. During food choice experiments, when the odor associated with the food had been encountered by the bee in a previous foraging trip at the feeding site, their choice was biased to that odor. However when the scented food was placed inside the nest where the contact with the odor depended on the food circulation dynamics of the colony their choice was not altered. To individually asses their olfactory learning abilities we performed a differential olfactory conditioning of proboscis extension response (PER). The individuals did not show significant discrimination levels unless they had previously ingested scented food. Only then they were able to learn the association of food to a specific odor. From our results it appears that T. angustula bees can effectively learn the food´s odor and use that information in their search for food, and that they rely more on their own individual prior experiences than on the information provided by nest mates. Supported by CONICET, ANPCYT