Meeting 1169 Minutes
Minutes from the 1169th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological club
President Shayla Salzman called the 1169th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:30 pm on Tuesday November 10th in MCZ 101, 26 Oxford St.
Approximately 25 members and guests were in attendance.
President Shayla Salzman announced the club’s participation in a photography exhibit for March of 2016 at the Massachusetts Audubon Society visitor center. Members are encouraged to submit high-quality images for the showing. The club will cover the cost of printing and framing. Secretary Andrea Golden has offered to help in organizing. An announcement will be posted to the CEC website with details.
Dan Papaj of University of Arizona Tucson presented a talk entitled Learning and Uncertainty in Plant-Pollinator Interactions.
Insects use signals in a variety of ways, such as commination between each other, identifying sex, hiding, or even false signals. However, signals are uncertain for insects in two major ways: signal detection and information reliability. Many insects use floral resources and flowers should exhibit obvious signals to call in pollinators, but flowers vary in signal with available light and windy conditions.
Dr. Papaj and his group have studied the uncertainty of floral color signal in pollinating Bombus bees behavior. Peak shift experiments are often used in psychology, where there are two overlapping signals with good and bad outcomes respectively and the question is asked where does the chooser draw the line of signal to avoid. They found that bees were able to learn to avoid the bad signal color and shift further in color range to the other side of the good signal color. They found that odor rescued this peak shift, supporting the idea that flowers are potentially multi-model in signals to reduce uncertainty in pollinators.
They also tested information reliability, whether bees trusted more their personal information or social information and found that they respond more to social information unless social information is unreliable, then they rely completely on personal information and avoid social cues.
Notes by Shayla Salzman,
CEC President
