The Fitness Value of Temporal Cognition in Bees

From motor control and communication to predator avoidance and foraging, animals must navigate an environment that changes dynamically in time. For this reason, in many domains the ability to perceive and process time (temporal cognition) is crucial for fitness.

The perception of time can be influenced by various factors including attention, memory and internal emotional states, suggesting that we can use time processing abilities as a proxy to assess animal welfare in natural settings.

This PhD project will look at the time processing abilities of different bee species in the laboratory and in the wild, linking cognitive processes and welfare states.

We will test bees' ability to use temporal cues to guide foraging, the cognitive limits in processing temporal complexity and the link to communication.

We will test the influence of internal emotion-like states in bees on their time processing abilities and, building on this, we will develop an apparatus for automated behavioural studies in wild populations to assess these links in a naturalistic setting.