Student Work

The Effect of Chronological Age and Foraging Experience on Mental Flexibility in Bumble Bees

Public

Downloadable Content

open in viewer

Mental flexibility is the brain’s ability to rapidly and effectively switch between tasks. The additional mental processing time required by task switching is known as a switch cost. This process is used by foraging bumble bees that are faced with various flower types and must decide when to switch between them. The purpose of this study was to determine if a bee’s age or foraging experience impacts its mental flexibility, altering its ability to forage proficiently. By using a novel behavioral assay to measure the bees’ foraging efficiency, we found that more experience led to decreased mental flexibility. This effect is independent of a bee’s age, which had no impact on mental flexibility. These results indicate that increased experience correlates with cognitive decline in bumble bees.

  • This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.
Creator
Publisher
Identifier
  • E-project-042513-011211
Advisor
Year
  • 2013
Date created
  • 2013-04-25
Resource type
Major
Rights statement

Relations

In Collection:

Items

Items

Permanent link to this page: https://digital.wpi.edu/show/zg64tn05j