Bumblebees distinguish floral scent patterns, and can transfer these to corresponding visual patterns.

摘要: Flowers act as multisensory billboards to pollinators by using a range of sensory modalities such visual patterns and scents. Different floral organs release differing compositions quantities the volatiles contributing scent, suggesting that scent may be patterned within flowers. Early experiments suggested can distinguish between scents regions, but little is known about how these potential might influence pollinators. We show bumblebees learn different spatial same they are better at learning flowers when pattern corresponds matching pattern. Surprisingly, once bees have learnt arrangement pattern, subsequently prefer visit novel unscented an identical marks, multimodal signals exploit mechanisms which information stored bee.