[CS] CS Wednesday Talk May 2, by Anne Leonard, Darwin Fellow, UMass Amherst

[Paula Harmon]

Join us for the last CS WEDNESDAY NOON TALK for Spring 2012 on 
Wednesday, May 2, in the ASH Lobby.

"Flowers help bees cope with uncertainty: signal detection and the 
function of floral complexity"

By Anne Leonard, Ph.D., Darwin Fellow, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
http://www.bio.umass.edu/oeb/darwin-fellows

ABSTRACT: Many organisms produce signals that span multiple sensory 
modalities, despite the costs and risks of producing a complex and 
conspicuous display. For example, plants attract pollinators with floral 
displays comprised of both visual and olfactory stimuli. Yet, the 
question of why plants produce multimodal flowers remains nearly 
unexplored. We used Signal Detection Theory to test the hypothesis that 
multimodal signals reduce pollinators' uncertainty about individual 
display components. Specifically, we asked if one signal, odor, improved 
certainty about the value of another signal, color.  We trained 
bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) to discriminate between rewarding and 
unrewarding flowers of slightly different hues (i.e. model and mimic) in 
either the presence or absence of floral scent. In a test phase, we 
offered these bees a wide range of floral hues and recorded their 
ability to identify the hue rewarded during training. We interpreted the 
extent to which bees' preferences were biased away from the unrewarding 
hue ("peak shift") as an indicator of uncertainty in color discrimination.

Our findings suggest that a flower's scent focuses attention on its hue, 
thereby facilitating learning and reducing uncertainty about color. More 
broadly, we suggest that uncertainty reduction can play a key role in 
the evolution of signal complexity.

Anne Leonard completed her dissertation research on the role of acoustic 
and chemical signals in cricket mate choice at the University of 
California, Davis, with Ann Hedrick. Her interest in complex signaling 
led to a postdoc at the University of Arizona with Daniel Papaj, where 
her research on bumble bees addressed the function of complex floral 
signals. As a Darwin Fellow at UMass, Anne is pursuing her interests in 
signal complexity and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty 
via collaborations with Lynn Adler and Elizabeth Jakob.

In the ASH Lobby, a light lunch is available

-- 
Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant
School of Cognitive Science
Hampshire College
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002
phone: 413.559.5502
fax: 413.559.5438
http://cs.hampshire.edu
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