Individual animals allowed the opportunity to learn generally outperform those prevented from learning, yet, within a species the capacity for learning varies markedly. The evolutionary processes that maintain this variation in learning ability are not yet well understood. Several studies demonstrate links between fitness traits and visual learning, but the selection pressures operating on cognitive traits are likely influenced by multiple sensory modalities. In addition to vision, most animals will employ a combination of sound, temperature, taste, pressure, and/or smell. Some animals demonstrate individual preference for, or enhanced learning performance using certain senses in relation to particular aspects of their behaviour (e.g. foraging), whereas conspecific individuals may show different preferences. By assessing fitness traits in relation to different sensory modalities we will strengthen our understanding of factors driving observed variation in learning ability. We assessed the relationship between the olfactory learning ability of bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) and their foraging performance in their natural environment. We found that bees which failed to learn this odour-reward association had shorter foraging careers; foraging for fewer days and thus provisioning their colonies with fewer resources. This was not due to a reduced propensity to forage, but may have been due to a reduced ability to return to their colony. When comparing among only individuals that did learn, we found that the rate at which floral resources were collected was similar, regardless of how they performed in the olfactory learning task. Our results demonstrate that an ability to learn olfactory cues can have a positive impact of the foraging performance of B. terrestris in a natural environment, but echo findings of earlier studies on visual learning, which suggest that enhanced learning is not necessarily beneficial for bee foragers provisioning their colony.

中文翻译：

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在自然栖息地觅食时，气味学习蜜蜂的表现优于非学习者

个体动物允许学习的机会通常优于那些无法学习的动物，但是，在一个物种内，学习能力差异很大。维持这种学习能力变化的进化过程尚不清楚。几项研究证明了健康特征与视觉学习之间的联系，但对认知特征起作用的选择压力可能受到多种感官方式的影响。除了视觉，大多数动物还会使用声音、温度、味道、压力和/或气味的组合。一些动物使用与其行为的特定方面（例如觅食）相关的某些感官表现出个人偏好或增强的学习表现，而同种个体可能表现出不同的偏好。通过评估与不同感官方式相关的健康特征，我们将加强我们对驱动观察到的学习能力变化的因素的理解。我们评估了熊蜂（Bombus terrestris）的嗅觉学习能力与其在自然环境中的觅食性能之间的关系。我们发现，未能学会这种气味-奖励关联的蜜蜂觅食时间较短；觅食天数更少，从而为它们的殖民地提供更少的资源。这不是由于觅食倾向降低，而可能是由于返回殖民地的能力降低。当仅在确实学习的个体之间进行比较时，我们发现收集花卉资源的速度是相似的，无论他们在嗅觉学习任务中的表现如何。