D’Adamo & Lozada—Landmark use while re-locating a food source

New Zealand Journal of Zoology abstracts

Foraging behaviour in Vespula germanica wasps re-locating a food source

Paola D’Adamo^*

Mariana Lozada

Laboratorio Ecotono

Universidad Nacional del Comahue
Quintral 1250 – (8400)
Bariloche, Argentina

^*Author for correspondence: pdadamo@crub.uncoma.edu.ar; mlozada@crub.uncoma.edu.ar

Abstract We analysed landmark guidance in Vespula germanica wasps re-locating a food source. Individuals were trained to feed from a dish surrounded by four coloured cylinders (i.e., an experimental landmark array). Each wasp was allowed to feed either one or three times from the array. At the testing phase, food was removed and the array was displaced 60 cm away from the training site. Different treatments were evaluated by presenting four, two or one of the cylinders that originally formed the array. When wasps returned looking for food, we recorded the number of visits to the displaced site or to the training site for each treatment. Wasp guidance was affected by increasing amounts of mismatch (by displacement and reduction of landmarks). Moreover, wasps visited the training site and the displaced site significantly more often when trained with three feeding trials than when trained with only one.

Keywords landmark guidance; learning; motivation; social wasps; visual cues

A07020; Online publication date 22 February 2008; Received 22 May 2007, accepted 19 September 2007

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