Bumble Bees Show Asymmetrical Discrimination Between Two Odors in a Classical Conditioning Procedure

Abstract

Olfactory processing of two odorants and their mixture was investigated in bumble bees Bombus terrestris using classical conditioning of the proboscis extension. In a standard procedure, workers were able to learn linalool, phenylacetaldehyde, and the mixture of these two components, with a similar level of response to these three stimuli. Thereafter, when we applied a differential conditioning procedure where one rewarded odorant was presented alternately against an unrewarded one, an asymmetrical discrimination between the two pure odors was found. Bumble bees performed well in the discriminative task when linalool was the rewarded stimulus and phenylacetaldehyde the unrewarded one, but they had difficulty learning phenylacetaldehyde if it was the rewarded odor in the symmetrical procedure. Indeed, unrewarded stimulations with linalool appeared to disrupt the learning of the alternative odor, possibly due to an innate biological meaning of linalool.