英国伦敦玛丽女王大学Lars Chittka和Alice D. Bridges共同合作，近期取得重要工作进展。他们研究提出，大黄蜂的社会学习行为过于复杂而无法单独创新。相关研究成果2024年3月6日在线发表于《自然》杂志上。

据介绍，文化是指在社会上习得的行为，并随着时间的推移在人群中持续存在。越来越多的证据表明，动物文化可以像人类文化一样是累积的：其特征是在以前的基础上不断创新。然而，人类的累积文化涉及到非常复杂的行为，以至于超出了任何个人在一生中独立发现的能力。到目前为止，还没有研究表明无脊椎动物存在这种现象。

研究人员展示了大黄蜂可以向受过训练的示范蜂学习，打开一个新的两步拼图盒来获得食物奖励，尽管它们无法独立完成。如果不提供与这一行动相关的临时奖励，实验人员无法训练示范蜂完成未经奖励的第一步，而在训练的后期阶段，该奖励被取消。

然而，三分之一幼稚的观察者蜜蜂从这些示范者那里学会了打开两步盒子，但在第一步之后却没有得到奖励。这表明，社会学习可能允许习得过于复杂的行为，而无法通过个人学习“重新创新”。

此外，尽管暴露时间延长了24天，但幼稚的蜜蜂还是没能打开盒子。这一发现挑战了该领域的一种普遍观点：社会学习行为的能力是人类独有的，而这些行为不能通过个人的试错来创新。

附：英文原文

Title: Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone

Author: Bridges, Alice D., Royka, Amanda, Wilson, Tara, Lockwood, Charlotte, Richter, Jasmin, Juusola, Mikko, Chittka, Lars

Issue&Volume: 2024-03-06

Abstract: Culture refers to behaviours that are socially learned and persist within a population over time. Increasing evidence suggests that animal culture can, like human culture, be cumulative: characterized by sequential innovations that build on previous ones1. However, human cumulative culture involves behaviours so complex that they lie beyond the capacity of any individual to independently discover during their lifetime1,2,3. To our knowledge, no study has so far demonstrated this phenomenon in an invertebrate. Here we show that bumblebees can learn from trained demonstrator bees to open a novel two-step puzzle box to obtain food rewards, even though they fail to do so independently. Experimenters were unable to train demonstrator bees to perform the unrewarded first step without providing a temporary reward linked to this action, which was removed during later stages of training. However, a third of naive observer bees learned to open the two-step box from these demonstrators, without ever being rewarded after the first step. This suggests that social learning might permit the acquisition of behaviours too complex to ‘re-innovate’ through individual learning. Furthermore, naive bees failed to open the box despite extended exposure for up to 24 days. This finding challenges a common opinion in the field: that the capacity to socially learn behaviours that cannot be innovated through individual trial and error is unique to humans.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07126-4

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07126-4