Bumble bees that follow a stricter routine innovate less: Foraging behaviors, environmental complexity, and how they relate to novel problem solving

The ability of animals to innovate - solve novel problems - can shape their ecology and evolution. Here we investigate how individual traits and environmental complexity relate to successful solving of a novel problem. We presented foraging bumble bees (Bombus impatiens) with artificial flowers of not-previously-encountered shapes and recorded the bees latency to access nectar. We measured individual foraging traits across multiple trips with simple flowers that did not require innovation, and bees were foraging either in a simple or complex environment (cluttered flight arena). Bees in complex environments took longer to find and were less likely to land on novel flowers, indicating that environmental complexity may take up cognitive resources and make search more difficult. However, we did not find an effect of environmental treatment on the ability or time to access reward in novel flowers once bees had landed on them. In contrast, behavioral traits significantly predicted how quickly bees solved novel flowers. In particular, overall foraging tempo as well as routine formation, i.e. how much bees followed a fixed route on known flowers, predicted innovation - faster bees innovated faster, and bees with more repetitive foraging sequences were slower to solve the novel tasks. Overall, while the degree of evolutionary novelty in tasks or solutions is always hard to evaluate, our findings demonstrate that environment and individual traits may affect innovation in different ways. Individuals in simple environments may be more likely to detect, and individuals that are generally faster and have a lower tendency to develop fixed routines may be more likely to solve, novel tasks.