Howard Honours Projects

***I will not be taking on Honours students until mid-year 2025.***

One, two, bee: Numerical abilities in foraging honeybees

Background:  Despite having a miniature brain, honeybees show impressive learning, memory, and cognitive abilities, such as maze navigation, concept acquisition, human face discrimination, and categorisation of visual stimuli. In recent years, honeybees have been shown to have impressive numerical capability. They can perform tasks such as quantity discrimination, addition and subtraction, odd vs. even categorisation, learn the rule of greater vs. lesser, match numbers to symbols, and more. We aim to understand more about the numerical abilities they have and how we can push the cognitive limits of a miniature brain.

Project Aims:  The objective of this project is to determine whether honeybees prefer to use ratio or absolute number to solve a numerical task. We will then determine how well honeybees can discriminate between different ratios. The student will train free-flying honeybees to perform these numerical tasks and then test the bees on their performance during challenging ratio comparisons.

Techniques: Animal handling, experimental design, data analysis using R, conducting animal behaviour experiments.

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How does a miniature brain learn big things? The role of reinforcement in simple and complex learning by bees

Background: Despite their miniature brain, bees have displayed evidence of simple and complex learning ranging from simple colour and shape discriminations to problem solving using arithmetic. The way individual bees are trained and tested is known to have a drastic impact on their capacity to learn tasks and apply concepts.

Project Aims: This project will enable us to better understand animal cognition and intelligence. We aim to understand how the methods of training and testing a model species (European honeybee) will impact their perceived cognitive capabilities in these experiments. It could have vast implications for the fields of animal cognition and behaviour. All bees participate voluntarily in the experiments in an outdoor environment.

Techniques: Animal handling, experimental design, data analysis using R, conducting animal behaviour experiments.

Note: This project is only possible for a mid-year intake due to the restraints of a fieldwork season.

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Can a bee predict the future? Pattern prediction by the miniature brains of bees

Background: Higher level cognition is well-accepted in many vertebrate species. When invertebrates demonstrate the same behaviour, it is generally downgraded to a lower-level behaviour. In the project, we will explore the idea of complex cognitive ability with honeybees.

Project Aims: This project aims to determine if the miniature brains of bees are capable of predicting patterns through a complex series of tests using free-flying honeybees. All bees participate voluntarily in the experiments in an outdoor environment.

Techniques: Animal handling, experimental design, data analysis using R, conducting animal behaviour experiments.

Note: This project is only possible for a mid-year intake due to the restraints of a fieldwork season.

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Is an insect an individual or a superorganism? Exploring individuality in complex and impossible learning tasks

Background: Many vertebrates have been shown to display different strategies and capabilities in their learning, memory, and foraging strategies. Until recently, animals with small brains, such as insects, have been overlooked for their individuality. Recently, we have seen strong evidence of individual variation and strategies in how bees perform a variety of complex tasks and cognitive studies.

Project Aims: The project will explore how the European honeybee, an invertebrate model of cognition, acts in complex and impossible to solve tasks. We expect to find evidence of individual strategies when the task is impossible or very challenging compared to a task that is easy to learn. All bees participate voluntarily in the experiments in an outdoor environment.

Techniques: Animal handling, experimental design, data analysis using R, conducting animal behaviour experiments.

Note: This project is only possible for a mid-year intake due to the restraints of a fieldwork season.

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