Odour and visual cues utilised by German yellowjackets (Vespula

MOREYRA, S., D'ADAMO, P. AND LOZADA, M.

Australian Journal of Zoology

CSIRO PUBLISHING

Lugar: Collingwood; Año: 2006 vol. 54 p. 393 - 397

0004-959X

Foragers of Vespula germanica (Fab.) return to a food source that has not been depleted. In this work we investigate the utilisation of olfactory and visual cues by these foragers for relocating a specific source location.We trained wasp foragers to feed on a dish with either honey or meat. At the testing phase, we analysed searching and landing behaviour over three cues: the original feeding site, an unscented model of the food, and a container from which food odours emanated.We compared the responses of the foragers to the three cues and evaluated the effect of bait type withwhichwaspswere trained.We found that landing responses are elicited mainly by odour cues in both proteinand carbohydrate-trained wasps. However, the type of food that wasps are exploiting influences their searching behaviour, as the number of hovers over the visual cue was higher when wasps were trained with carbohydrates whereas the number of hovers over the original feeding site was higher when wasps were trained with proteins.Vespula germanica (Fab.) return to a food source that has not been depleted. In this work we investigate the utilisation of olfactory and visual cues by these foragers for relocating a specific source location.We trained wasp foragers to feed on a dish with either honey or meat. At the testing phase, we analysed searching and landing behaviour over three cues: the original feeding site, an unscented model of the food, and a container from which food odours emanated.We compared the responses of the foragers to the three cues and evaluated the effect of bait type withwhichwaspswere trained.We found that landing responses are elicited mainly by odour cues in both proteinand carbohydrate-trained wasps. However, the type of food that wasps are exploiting influences their searching behaviour, as the number of hovers over the visual cue was higher when wasps were trained with carbohydrates whereas the number of hovers over the original feeding site was higher when wasps were trained with proteins.