Teaching in honey bees
The study of social learning and teaching has a strong focus on vertebrates especially those that are closely related to humans. However, evidence especially within the last twenty years has indicated that other organisms may also show very similar characteristic, therefore this paper proposes a potential research opportunity into Bees, which have been show highly gregarious and interdependent creatures.
Background
In the current literature, a large area of research is devoted to how bees and other highly gregarious superorganism can be such productive organisms while living within such large interdependent communities. Neural imaging studies have provided some interesting findings, the average bee brain has around 960,000 …show more content…
Furthermore, the study must be conducted within the nectar flow months, which in New Zealand is between December and early march, this is essential to the study as it maximises the productive of the bees(Waikato Domestic Beekeepers Association2016). The bees will be caught over 5-6 days by training bees to collect 0.5M of sucrose solution from an artificial hive.(Farina et al., …show more content…
Performance during conditioning will be measured using the discrimination index (as it provides an understanding of PER responding this is done by subtracting the cumulative sum of a bee’s responses to the CS+ from the cumulative responses to the CS-,(Pelz, Gerber, & Menzel, 1997) these sums were then utilized in Kreskas–Wallis ANOVAS to provide differences between individuals. As for the rest of the study, previous studies have utilized G-test as a means for statistical significant between groups (Farina et al., 2005).
Seeing that the study also uses harmonic radars to track some of the bees, the study will utilize the Track Analysis Software V1 which allows for the tracking of a wide range of different characteristics such as various means for different variables such speed, turning angle, acceleration and other important factors. In terms of analysing these factors, the study will utilize a between group linear mixed model which provides confidence intervals, and other comparisons between groups and individuals across sessions of study (Wolf et al., 2014).
This proposal indicates some exciting avenues for future research, as Honey-bees despite their size may be shown to produce a behaviour that is very rarely seen outside of humans, seeing that bees and humans alike are highly gregarious it
The study of social learning and teaching has a strong focus on vertebrates especially those that are closely related to humans. However, evidence especially within the last twenty years has indicated that other organisms may also show very similar characteristic, therefore this paper proposes a potential research opportunity into Bees, which have been show highly gregarious and interdependent creatures.
Background
In the current literature, a large area of research is devoted to how bees and other highly gregarious superorganism can be such productive organisms while living within such large interdependent communities. Neural imaging studies have provided some interesting findings, the average bee brain has around 960,000 …show more content…
Furthermore, the study must be conducted within the nectar flow months, which in New Zealand is between December and early march, this is essential to the study as it maximises the productive of the bees(Waikato Domestic Beekeepers Association2016). The bees will be caught over 5-6 days by training bees to collect 0.5M of sucrose solution from an artificial hive.(Farina et al., …show more content…
Performance during conditioning will be measured using the discrimination index (as it provides an understanding of PER responding this is done by subtracting the cumulative sum of a bee’s responses to the CS+ from the cumulative responses to the CS-,(Pelz, Gerber, & Menzel, 1997) these sums were then utilized in Kreskas–Wallis ANOVAS to provide differences between individuals. As for the rest of the study, previous studies have utilized G-test as a means for statistical significant between groups (Farina et al., 2005).
Seeing that the study also uses harmonic radars to track some of the bees, the study will utilize the Track Analysis Software V1 which allows for the tracking of a wide range of different characteristics such as various means for different variables such speed, turning angle, acceleration and other important factors. In terms of analysing these factors, the study will utilize a between group linear mixed model which provides confidence intervals, and other comparisons between groups and individuals across sessions of study (Wolf et al., 2014).
This proposal indicates some exciting avenues for future research, as Honey-bees despite their size may be shown to produce a behaviour that is very rarely seen outside of humans, seeing that bees and humans alike are highly gregarious it