Fei Peng

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Southern Medical University

Previous studies suggest that social learning in bumblebees can occur through second-order conditioning, with conspecifics functioning as first-order reinforcers. However, the behavioural mechanisms underlying bumblebees’ acquisition of socially learned associations remain largely unexplored. Investigating these mechanisms requires detailed quantif...

Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display means-end comprehension in a string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with two options: one where a string was connected to an artificial flower containing a reward and...

Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display means-end comprehension in a string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with two options: one where a string is connected to an artificial flower containing a reward and t...

Social interactions with heterospecifics can yield important insights into the flexibility of behaviour and the role of learning in communication. Recently, the honeybee dance, a unique symbolic communication system to communicate positions in space, has been shown to involve learning. We asked if this communication system could potentially be lear...

Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display a means-end comprehension in string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with tasks involving choosing between two options: one where a string is connected to an artificial...

Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display a means-end comprehension in string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with tasks involving choosing between two options: one where a string is connected to an artificial...

Cooperation is common in animals, yet the specific mechanisms driving collaborative behaviour in different species remain unclear. We investigated the proximate mechanisms underlying the cooperative behaviour of bumblebees in two different tasks, where bees had to simultaneously push a block in an arena or a door at the end of a tunnel for access t...

Bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ) have been shown to engage in string-pulling behavior to access rewards. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether bumblebees display a means-end comprehension in string-pulling task. We presented bumblebees with tasks involving choosing between two options: one where a string is connected to an artificial...

Animals are often assumed to follow a strategy of energy maximization, and therefore should evaluate feeding options based on energy intake rates. However, at the proximal level, a direct estimate of energy intake rates, if that is possible at all, might require postabsorptive senses with relatively longer processing times, whereas an indirect esti...

In uncertain environments, animals often face the challenge of deciding whether to stay with their current foraging option or leave to pursue the next opportunity. The voluntary decision to persist at a location or with one option is a critical cognitive ability in animal temporal decision-making. Little is known about whether foraging insects form...

Are animals' preferences determined by absolute memories for options (e.g. reward sizes) or by their remembered ranking (better/worse)? The only studies examining this question suggest humans and starlings utilise memories for both absolute and relative information. We show that bumblebees' learned preferences are based only on memories of ordinal...

Are animals' preferences determined by absolute memories for options (e.g., reward sizes) or by their remembered ranking (better/worse)? The only studies examining this question suggest humans and starlings utilize memories for both absolute and relative information. We show that bumblebees make decisions using only memories of ordinal comparisons....

We examined how bees solve a visual discrimination task with stimuli commonly used in numerical cognition studies. Bees performed well on the task, but additional tests showed that they had learned continuous (non-numerical) cues. A network model using biologically plausible visual feature filtering and a simple associative rule was capable of lear...

Negative patterning discrimination is considered a nonelemental form of learning, and has been extensively investigated across taxa. Several insect species have also been examined with this task, but only honey bees, Apis mellifera, have so far demonstrated this capacity. Recent empirical and theoretical studies suggest that negative patterning can...

True colour vision requires comparing the responses of different spectral classes of photoreceptors. In insects, there is a wealth of data available on the physiology of photoreceptors and on colour-dependent behaviour, but less is known about the neural mechanisms that link the two. The available information in bees indicates a diversity of colour...

Honeybees are models for studying how animals with relatively small brains accomplish complex cognition, displaying seemingly advanced (or "non-elemental") learning phenomena involving multiple conditioned stimuli. These include "peak shift" [1-4]-where animals not only respond to entrained stimuli, but respond even more strongly to similar ones th...

Ants, like many other animals, use visual memory to follow extended routes through complex environments, but it is unknown how their small brains implement this capability. The mushroom body neuropils have been identified as a crucial memory circuit in the insect brain, but their function has mostly been explored for simple olfactory association ta...

A. Distant view of the study site on the outskirts of Seville, Spain with the approximate nest position indicated by the arrow. The nest is surrounded by grass shrub blocking the view of distant objects such as trees. B. Close up view of the field site with the ant nest and experimental feeder marked. C. An example route followed by an ant through...

Capacity of a MB network with N = 20000 and p = 0.01. From Fig 5, the abstracted model provides the estimate that around 375 random images can be stored (KC weights set to 0) before the probability of an error (a new random image activates only KCs that have already had weights set to 0) exceeds 0.01. Using the full spiking network and the three fa...

This movie shows the result of a route re-capitulation by a simulated ant using the mushroom body model, and the corresponding visual information from the ant’s point of view that is used as input to the model. The direction of each 10cm step along the route is chosen by scanning (the scanning movement is not shown) ±60 degrees and choosing the dir...