3 jui 2024

14:00 à 15:00

Active Vision: bees tell us where to look - elegant & simple solutions to complex problem-solving (Amphi FSS)

Dr. Marie-Geneviève Guiraud (Université Macquarie, Australie), invité par J. Serres

Summary: More and more studies are emerging about the amazing learning capabilities of our favourite pollinators. These studies have led many animal researchers to believe that bees can easily acquire abstract concepts and numerical abilities, for example. However, our work proves that there are other ways to account for the results of these relevant studies. In this talk, I will weigh in on this debate, presenting behavioural and tracking data (2D and 3D) of bees engaged in solving different visual puzzles. Whether they are trained to solve very simple discrimination tasks (triangle versus square), tasks with changing targets or complex discrimination tasks (human faces), their movement in space (active vision) seems to be the best indicator of their learning performance and the saliency of the visual components used for recognition and memorisation. This work emphasizes on the importance of paying attention to the specific kind of visual and navigational strategies that bees use to succeed at these tasks and implement a more rigourous approach for neuro-cognition using video-recording and analysis in order to draw more precise conclusions. For instance, with training, bees can learn to attend only a fraction of visual stimuli instead of whole stimuli. They will follow edges and look for anything that allows them to simplify rule-learning. What else can we learn from following their wings-steps?

Dr. Marie-Geneviève Guiraud - post-doc à l'Université Macquarie (Australie)