Sensitivity to a change in reward is heritable in the honeybee, Apis mellifera

Honeybees must track changing distributions of food resources in their envi ronment. We evaluated the genetic basis for interindividual differences in this ability by selecting lines of honeybees that differed in their tendenc y to reverse a learned discrimination between two odours. We show that indi vidual variation in reversal learning performance, which is an analogue of natural foraging problems such as risk sensitivity, has a heritable compone nt. Selection on drones, which are haploid, was sufficient to obtain a sign ificant selection response after a single generation. In addition, worker a ge and/or task specialization, in terms of performance of housekeeping vers us outside duties, is a source of environmental control over expression of reversal performance. Finally, we identified a correlated response in laten t inhibition, in which pre-exposure to a conditioned stimulus (CS) retards learning about that CS when it is subsequently paired with reinforcement. F rom an ecological standpoint, our results suggest that colonies that contai n a variety of genetic lineages may be able to target foragers to learning tasks in which they are genetically predisposed to do well. (C) 2001 The As sociation for the Study of Animal Behaviour.