STS 2011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Selfishness, Color Vision, Hymenoptera
Document Summary
Functional/fitness: observation of the number of offspring that survive vs. offspring to determine fitness, contextual information from third parties, observances in nature. Floral constancy of worker honey bees when foraging- most pollen loads contain one type of pollen. Bees grooming themselves on the flowers (rubbing off pollen) Floral constancy- they recognize flower types by color, shape and scent. Bees can see in the ultraviolet, this helps them find nectar and sexual organs of flowers. Olfaction in the bee- bees have a spatial and temporal code for olfaction, this helps them sort out thousands of molecules. Bees learn floral constancy when they receive nectar from foragers as hive nurses and start visiting flowers. Flower odor learning (conditioned stimulus = odor, unconditioned stimulus= sucrose) Improvement in flower handling accuracy of bees at jewelweed flowers. Floral constancy may improve the ability of bees to productively make honey. Evolution and dances are important for specialization of bees in floral constancy.