A new study published in the journal eLife elucidates the honeybee’s behavioral strategy to associate sensory cues with rewards of different values. Based on solid experimental evidence, the study demonstrates how sensory evidence and reward likelihood quantitatively affect the decision-making process and the bees’ response time. The behavioral paradigm and the proposed model could provide interesting insights for scientists studying decision-making in higher animal species.
In the natural world, decision-making processes are often intricate and challenging.
Animals frequently encounter situations where they have limited information on which to rely to guide them, yet even simple choices can have far-reaching impact on survival.
Each time a honeybee sets out to collect nectar, for example, it must use tiny variations in color or odor to decide which flower it should land on and explore.
Each ‘mistake’ is costly, wasting energy and exposing the insect to potential dangers.
To learn how to refine their choices through trial-and-error, bees only have at their disposal a brain the size of a sesame seed, which contains fewer than a million neurons. And yet, they excel at this task, being both quick and accurate.
The underlying mechanisms which drive these remarkable decision-making capabilities remain unclear.
“Decision-making is at the core of cognition,” said Macquarie University’s Professor Andrew Barron.
“It’s the result of an evaluation of possible outcomes, and animal lives are full of decisions.”
“A honeybee has a brain smaller than a sesame seed. And yet she can make decisions faster and more accurately than we can.”
“A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the back up of a supercomputer.”
“Today’s autonomous robots largely work with the support of remote computing,” he added.
“Drones are relatively brainless, they have to be in wireless communication with a data center.”
“This technology path will never…
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