social reinforcement delays in free-flying honey bees (apis mellifera l.)社会强化延迟自由飞行蜜蜂蜜蜂(l).pdf

Social Reinforcement Delays in Free-Flying Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.) 1 1 1 1 2 David Philip Arthur Craig , James W. Grice , Chris A. Varnon , B. Gibson , Michel B. C. Sokolowski , Charles I. Abramson1* ´ 1 Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States of America, 2 Department of Psychology, Universite de Picardie – Jules Verne, Amiens, Picardy, France Abstract Free-flying honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) reactions were observed when presented with varying schedules of post- reinforcement delays of 0 s, 300 s, or 600 s. We measured inter-visit-interval, response length, inter-response-time, and response rate. Honey bees exposed to these post-reinforcement delay intervals exhibit one of several patterns compared to groups not encountering delays, and had longer inter-visit-intervals. We observed no group differences in inter-response time. Honey bees with higher response rates tended to not finish the experiment. The removal of the delay intervals increased response rates for those subjects that completed the trials. Citation: Craig DPA, Grice JW, Varnon CA, Gibson B, Sokolowski MBC, et al. (2012) Social Reinforcement Delays in Free-Flying Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.). PLoS ONE 7(10): e46729. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046729 ´ Editor: Cedric Sueur, Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, France Received May 16, 2012; Accepted September 7, 2012; Published October 4, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Craig et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the