Patriline-level variability in olfactory learning in the honey bee

Genetically determined differences among honeybee workers are known to contribute to task specialisation. To investigate the genetic component of olfactory learning we used proboscis extension conditioning to record individual performance, and a patriline-level analysis to separate the variance in learning performance into its different components. We found that the among-patriline within-colony component (solely genetic) explained 11.2% of the variance in acquisition performance and 6.5% of the variance in resistance to extinction. While environmental effects appeared to be the main source of variation, our results confirm that olfactory learning has a significant genetic basis. If colonies benefit from genetic differences among workers in task expression thresholds, colonies might also benefit from genetic differences in cognitive performance among workers by influencing task performance