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Data from: Cognitive tasks could be biased towards generalists: a lesson from wild non-eusocial bees

Kashetsky, Tovah1; Raine, Nigel E.2; Forrest, Jessica R. K.1

Research facility: University of Ottawa
Published Jun 05, 2025 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqx0

Data files

Jun 05, 2025 version files 6.50 MB
Jun 05, 2025 version files 6.50 MB

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Abstract

In this study, we compared associative learning performance and exploratory tendencies between dietary specialist and generalist bee (Anthophila) species using a closed-environment task with free-moving bees called the free-moving proboscis-extension response (FMPER). We found lower participation rates than expected, especially among specialist species, which hindered our ability to answer our primary question. Thus, we combined our data with another published dataset that reported results from the same learning task but for several different bee species (again including specialists and generalists) to investigate the relation of diet breadth with associative learning and exploration across a broader species assemblage. The data are grouped by individual bee ID, for which each individual has information about life history traits (taxonomic information, inter-tegular distance (proxy for body size), diet breadth) and values for the 8 experimental trials of the FMPER task (time until drinking the correct strip, time until first drink, if first choice was correct, participation). We present our files for organizing data, creating figures, and analyzing the data. Phylogeny-informed generalized linear mixed models indicate that neither specialists nor generalists increased accuracy throughout the task, although both diet breadths became faster at drinking from the rewarding strip. Bees decreased their drinking latency—a measure of exploration—throughout the experiment, with no effect of diet breadth. However, specialists became less likely to participate over the course of the task compared to generalists. Our results suggest that specialist and generalist bees have experienced similar selection for associative learning ability, and that specialists are hesitant to continue interacting with novel stimuli.