Fig. 2.

(A) Median acquisition scores (closed circles) and quartiles (upper and lower lines) for tactile acquisition in bees with different behavioural roles (experiment 1). We analysed foragers with short foraging durations (6–13 days) and age-matched nurse bees as well as foragers with long foraging durations (>15 days) and age-matched nurse bees. Note that in this experiment, foragers with long foraging durations (>15 days) and age-matched nurse bees were significantly older than foragers with short foraging durations (6–13 days) and age-matched nurse bees (see Table 1). Significant differences in the acquisition scores of groups are marked with asterisks. ^*P⩽0.05; ^**P⩽0.01. (B) Tactile acquisition curves of bees in experiment 1 with different behavioural roles. The percentage of bees showing conditioned proboscis extension response (PER) during presentation of the tactile object in each conditioning trial is shown for each behavioural group. See text for statistics. In each group, 30 bees were tested.