Sex or Food? bumblebee males and queens as a model to understand the foraging-mating trade-off in animals

• Applicant: Dr. Stephan Wolf
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 194868272

A widespread strategy to optimize an animal’s behaviour is to learn and memorize environmental cues, requiring adequate selection of relevant cues. Yet, which option to take when co-occurring cues are relevant for two essential but incompatible activities, such as foraging and mate search? Most animals need to accomplish foraging and mate search at the same time, which is a fundamental, yet rarely addressed, conflict for allocation time and energy to these activities. I will, therefore, explore how animals use sensory and cognitive processing to optimally trade off foraging and mate search. Worker bumblebees are a widely used model system to study the optimization of foraging behaviour, yet their near exclusive devotion to flower visitation limits the models applicability to animals that must balance foraging with other activities. Bumblebee males and queens, however, face the challenge to trade off efficient foraging and successful reproduction. Bumblebee reproductives are, therefore, an ideal model to explore the strategies to solve this behavioural conflict in animals, also providing most of the advantages of the bumblebee worker system. To explore the behavioural plasticity within and between these conflicting activities I will study the learning performance in foraging context by bumblebee queens and males experimentally modulated in their mating motivation. I will investigate how the attention to mate search affects the visual learning, decision speed-accuracy trade-off, and predator recognition performance. I will also explore the effects on the behavioural decision making between these two activities if both are available at the same time. By addressing a fundamental behavioural conflict of general relevance for most animals, this project satisfies the need to scientifically dissect and understand animal decision making as a product of natural and sexual selection. My results will also have implications for the conservation of plant-pollinator mutualisms.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Professor Dr. Lars Chittka