Life history of learning: performance curves of honeybees in settings that minimize the role of learning

Life history research has mostly neglected learning even though it is probably a major contributor to lifetime performance in a variety of animals. As part of an ongoing project evaluating the relative contribution of learning, physiology and effort to performance throughout the life span, I quantified lifetime performance of honeybees, Apis mellifera, foraging at a feeder. Unlike natural foraging, where bees may learn a variety of features that contribute to increased performance, food collection from a feeder requires little learning. Foragers showed no long-term change in the rate of food delivery, a pattern that was different from published data indicating a long-term gradual increase in foraging performance in honeybees under natural settings. The discrepancy between bees' lifetime performance in the artificial versus natural settings suggests that learning is the key component contributing to the increase in performance throughout a forager's life as observed in the field.