Optimal Foraging

Claire Hemmingway, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, is our guest today. Her research is on decision-making in animal cognition, focusing on neotropical bats and bumblebees.

Claire discussed how bumblebees make foraging decisions and how they communicate when foraging. She discussed how they set up experiments in the lab to address questions about bumblebees foraging. She also discussed some nuances between bees in the lab and those in the wild.

Claire discussed factors that drive an animal's foraging decisions. She explained the foraging theory and how a colony works together to optimize its foraging. She also touched on some irrational foraging behaviors she observed in her study.

Claire discussed some techniques bees use to learn from past behaviors. She discussed the effect of climate change on foraging bees' learning behavior.

Claire discussed how bats respond to calling frogs when foraging. She also spoke about choice overload in that they make detrimental decisions when loaded with too many options.

Guest

Claire Hemmingway: I am an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee in the Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Psychology & Neuroscience. I am also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). My lab broadly explores the mechanisms, outcomes, and evolutionary consequences of animal decision making. To address these questions, we study foraging behaviors in both bats and bees. Specifically, we ask how animals evaluate and make decisions between foraging options based on the signal and reward properties of each option. We also ask whether species differ in decision-making mechanisms based on their foraging strategy or other aspects of their ecology. Finally, we are interested in how certain decision mechanisms may shape the target of those decisions, such as floral signals and rewards.