Professor Dr Lars Chittka

Research Priorities: Entomology, evolutionary biology, cognitive research, sensory ecology, behavioural ecology
Lars Chittka is a biologist who conducts research into the evolutionary ecology of sensory systems and cognition by using insect-plant interactions as a model. He is especially renowned for his discoveries concerning the intelligence of honeybees and bumblebees. Chittka’s findings marked a departure from the prevailing view that insects were only capable of the most basic forms of associative learning. His work on the variation in cognitive skills between individual bees, colonies and bee populations has provided a new perspective on insect conservation.
With his working group, Chittka has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of how the cognitive-behavioural processes in animals function in ecosystems. His working group discovered that insects can create detailed memories of the landscape surrounding their hives, can count and can learn from each other in order to work out how to use tools. These findings sparked a new trend of exploring which cognitive skills could be implemented in an insect’s brain and how these skills could be realised on a neural level.
Using radar tracking, Chittka’s team has demonstrated how pollinating insects can solve a simple version of the travelling salesman problem, a statistical mathematical model of combinatorial optimisation. Chittka’s investigations on emotion-like states, social learning and speed-accuracy trade-offs in decision-making have enabled him to build neural models. These models show that sophisticated forms of information processing can develop from the same small neural circuit models that are used for “simple” classical conditioning. This has opened up the idea that many forms of cognition are “simple” on a computational level and can therefore evolve relatively easily.
In addition to neural principles, Chittka has conducted research into the variation in cognitive skills between individual bees, colonies and bee populations and has calculated the fitness benefits of learning ability in the wild. His discoveries have had far-reaching implications on our general understanding of animal cognition, its evolution and its neural bases and have offered a new perspective on nature conservation.