Elli Leadbeater
Royal Holloway University of London
Wednesday 6 September, 09:15 - 10:15 Lecture Theatre A
Talk title: Does (collective) cognition produce efficiently foraging bees?
00:00:00-00:01:09 - Introduction to Elli
00:01:10-00:06:22 - Introduction to the study
00:06:23-00:17:43 - Individual memory
00:17:44-00:26:16 - Dance communication networks
00:26:17-00:33:49 - When do bees use dance rather than scent?
00:33:50-00:43:05 - When do dances impact colony foraging?
00:43:06-00:44:08 - Summary
00:44:09-00:58:01 - Q&A
Elli Leadbeater’s research interests centre around the evolution of social behaviour and cognition.
Her insights into pollinator behaviour have direct relevance to the challenge of ensuring pollination
success in both natural populations and in agriculture.
Elli’s early research showed that bumblebees are capable of observational learning in a foraging context and that their stimulus choice is determined by what they learn from co-specifics. She then extended her analyses to copying and robbing behaviour, and later, focused on how selection shapes animal brains to promote social learning and on the role of cooperation between unrelated nest-mates for colony success. Her more recent work has addressed the question of how urban environments affect pollinator activities and survival, and how pesticides and other forms of environmental stress affect pollinators.