Information transfer beyond the waggle dance: observational learning in bees and flies
Résumé
Social information transfer is part of the success of animal societies and has been documented in a variety of taxa, from slime molds to humans. In invertebrates, the historical research focus has been on the specialized signals shaped by selection to convey information, such as the honeybee waggle dance. However, growing evidence shows that invertebrates also commonly glean critical information about their environment by observing others. For instance, a bumblebee's choice between novel flower species is influenced by the observation of the foraging choices of more experienced conspecifics. Recent studies suggest that these seemingly complex learning abilities can be explained in terms of simple associative learning, whereby individuals learn to associate social cues (conditioned stimuli) to reward cues (unconditioned stimuli). Here, we review the behavioral evidence of observational learning both in bees and Drosophila. We discuss the validity of associative accounts of observational learning and the potential neural circuits mediating visual social learning in these model species to define future research avenues for studying the neurobiology of social cognition in miniature brains.
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