Insect cognition
[2][3] Research questions consist of experiments aimed to evaluate insects abilities such as perception,[4] emotions[1][5] attention,[3] memory (wasp multiple nest),[1] spatial cognition,[1][6] tools use,[3] problem solving,[3] and concepts.
[3][7] Unlike in animal behavior the concept of group cognition plays a big part in insect studies.
[3] It is logical for the understanding of cognitive capacities as adaptations to differing ecological niches under the Cognitive faculty by species when analyzing behaviors, this means viewing behaviors as adaptations to an individual's environment and not weighing them more advanced when compared to other different individuals.
Over evolutionary time, insects may develop evolved learning biases that reflect the food source they feed on.
[15] Biases in learning allow insects to quickly associate relevant features of the environment that are related to food.
[19] Certain butterfly species also show evidence for time-place learning due to their trap-line foraging behaviour.
[20] This is when an animal consistently visits the same foraging sites in a sequential manner across multiple days and is thought to be suggestive of a time-place learning ability.
[26] Ants will show conspecifics food sites they have discovered in a process called tandem running.
This is considered to be a rare instance of teaching, a specialized form of social learning, in the animal kingdom.
Studies in bumblebees have provided evidence that some insects show the beginnings of cumulative culture through the act of refining existing behaviours into more efficient forms.
[28] This demonstration of refinement of a previously observed existing behaviour could be considered a rudimentary form of cumulative culture, although this is a highly controversial idea.
As a bee ages it undergoes a shift in tasks from nurse to forager, leaving the hive to collect pollen.
This shift in job leads to changes in gene expression within the brain which are associated with an increase in mushroom body size.
[36] Contrast this with a dipteran such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which has relatively small mushroom bodies and less complex spatial learning demands.
