Thursday, February 21, 2013

Bumblebees Sense Electric Fields in Flowers

Bumblebees Sense Electric Fields in Flowers: Finally, the team released bumblebees into an arena with artificial flowers, half of which were positively charged and carried a sucrose reward, and the other half of which were grounded and carried a bitter solution. Over time, the bees increasingly visited the rewarding charged flowers.

But when the researchers turned off the electrical charge on the flowers and re-released the trained bees, the insects visited rewarding flowers only about half of the time, as they would have by random chance.

No comments:

Post a Comment