COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS OF LEARNING IN HONEYBEES

The performance of free-flying and harnessed honeybees has been studie d in a variety of experiments patterned after those in which learning in vertebrates has been studied-among them experiments on amount, qual ity, and probability of reward; on compound conditioning and discrimin ation; and on spatial learning and memory. Despite the remoteness of t he evolutionary relationship and the vast differences in brain size an d structure, the results for honeybees are strikingly similar to those for vertebrates in many respects and different in only a few. The ext ent to which phenomena of learning common to honeybees and vertebrates can be understood in terms of common functional principles and mechan isms remains to be determined. None of the differences in the results for honeybees and vertebrates points unmistakably to a difference in t heir learning.