CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Floral scents guide insect pollinators in their final approach to flowers. In eusocial insects this cue can also be learned within the nest. We assessed Brazilian stingless bee Melipona quadrifasciata for their individual olfactory learning abilities and evaluated if the food scent could be learned during the social interactions occurred within the nest. We performed a differential classical conditioning protocol using the Proboscis Extension Response (PER) paradigm for the first time with these bees. To evaluate the influence of prior food-odor experiences within the colony we placed scented sucrose solution inside the nest, and registered an increase in their learning performance. Focusing in the recruitment behavior, we trained bees to collect scented sucrose solution and then captured the recruits before contacting the solution at the feeder. In this way any interaction with the food odor must have occurred inside the hive. These recruits discriminate better than those recruited to unscented food. This implies that M. quadrifasciata bees are able to learn the association food-odor inside their colonies by interactions with nestmates.