Color Constancy Exhibited by Honeybees (Apis Mellifera) in a Dynamic Lighting Environment

Ryan Keith

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Bauer, Gordon

Keywords

Vision, Illumination, Color Perception, Navigation, Pattern Recognition, Flower Learning

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Due to its trichromatic nature, honeybee color vision is of great interest to researchers. It has been found that some visual phenomena, such as color constancy, occur in honeybees as well as humans. Because of this, honeybees can provide a simple framework in which to examine these complex sensory processes. This study required subjects to take part in a dynamically changing color constancy task. Subjects were first trained to discriminate a blue target from red, green, and yellow alternatives under either red, green, or white lighting. After learning to discriminate and return to the target, subjects were required to perform the same task under dynamic lighting conditions. In this condition, targets were unrewarded and lighting changed every two seconds from red to blue to green to yellow. No significant differences were found between groups trained under red, green, or white light, suggesting color constancy. However, this does not strongly support the null hypothesis as the test lacked statistical power due to a small sample size (N = 9). If the null hypothesis were supported, it would assist in explaining how honeybees are able to regularly locate the same targets in nature, even under differing lighting conditions and contexts.

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