Social learning research outside the laboratory: How and Why?

Social learning enables both human and nonhuman animals to acquire information relevant to many biologically important activities: foraging (Galef & Giraldeau, 2001; Mesoudi & O’Brien, 2008), mate choice (Jones, De- Bruine, Little, Burriss, & Feinberg, 2007; Laland, 1994; White, 2004), conflict (Peake & McGregor, 2004), and predator avoidance (Griffin, 2004). Although use of social information is not inherently adaptive (Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Laland, 2004), its frequent roles in the development in animals of both innovations (sensu Reader & Laland, 2003) and routine skills (Jaeggi et al., 2010; Krakauer, 2005), as well as its exceptional prevalence in human societies, suggest the importance of social information in biological and cultural evolution

Flower choice copying in bumblebees

We tested a hypothesis originating with Darwin that bees outside the nest exhibit social learning in flower choices. Naive bumblebees, Bombus impatiens, were allowed to observe trained bees or artificial bees forage from orange or green flowers. Subsequently, observers of bees on green flowers landed more often on green flowers than non-observing controls or observers of models on orange flowers. These results demonstrate that bumblebees can change flower choice by observations of non-nest mates, a novel form of social learning in insects that could provide unique benefits to the colony