The effects of social and foraging experiences across cognitive domains in Polistes fuscatus

Experiences during development have major effects on cognitive performance. Thus far, most cognitive development research has tested how a single environmental variable influences one or a few aspects of cognition in the laboratory. Understanding cognitive variation in wild animals requires testing how performance on diverse cognitive tasks is affected by multiple interacting environmental variables in the wild. Here, we experimentally altered social and foraging experience during early adulthood in Polistes fuscatus paper wasps in the field. Previous work has shown that individual face learning mediates P. fuscatus social interactions and social experience influences how individual face learning develops. Wasps were placed in one of three treatment groups: social with foraging experience, social without foraging experience or social isolation with no foraging experience. After 10 days, we tested their individual face learning, colour learning, colour reversal and multiaccess box performance. We found that foraging experience influenced performance on the multiaccess box, as wasps with social and foraging experience opened more doors in the multiaccess box than wasps with only social experience. Foraging experience did not influence performance on other cognitive tasks, indicating that different aspects of cognition develop independently. Social experience did not influence performance on any cognitive test, a surprising result given that previous work in laboratory-raised wasps showed that social experience influences the development of individual face learning. Overall, this experiment shows different aspects of cognition develop independently of each other rather than remaining linked across rearing environments in an overall general intelligence factor. In addition, social and foraging experience during early adulthood have different effects on cognitive development. • We altered social and foraging experience in P. fuscatus paper wasps in the field. • Foraging experience influenced performance on a multiaccess box. • Social experience did not influence performance on any cognitive test. • Different aspects of P. fuscatus cognition developed independently. • Social and foraging experience have different effects on cognitive development.