Aurore Avarguès-Weber
Aurore Avarguès-Weber | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1983 Givry, France |
| Occupation(s) | Researcher in cognitive neuroscience and ethology |
| Years active | 2007–present |
| Known for | Research on behavior and cognition of bees |
Aurore Avarguès-Weber (born 1983) is a French researcher in cognitive neuroscience and ethology, with a specialization in the behavior of bees. She is affiliated with the Centre de Recherche sur la Cognition Animale located in Toulouse.
Her investigations into the neural foundations of visual cognition in social insects earned her the International Rising Talent Fellowship from the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2015. Additionally, she was honored with the CNRS Bronze Medal for her scientific achievements.
Early life
Originating from Givry, France, Avarguès-Weber completed her secondary education in Chalon-sur-Saône. She then attended a Classe Préparatoire program in Lyon, where she cultivated a keen interest in biology and physiology.
Education and research
Avarguès-Weber attended the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan and earned her doctorate in 2010 at the Research Centre for Animal Cognition (CRCA) in Toulouse, under the mentorship of Martin Giurfa. Her postdoctoral studies were conducted with Lars Chittka at Queen Mary University and Jean-Christophe Sandoz in Gif-sur-Yvette. Presently, she is a member of CRCA's EXPLAIN research group.
Though initially drawn to orangutan studies, since 2007 she has concentrated her research on bees. Her findings have notable relevance to fields such as computer science and facial recognition technology. Her laboratory has demonstrated that bees are capable of numerical understanding and abstract mathematical reasoning, including operations like addition, subtraction, and the concept of zero. Moreover, her research revealed that bees can identify face-like patterns. She is currently developing virtual reality tools to investigate more advanced cognitive functions in bees.
Awards and achievements
In 2015, Avarguès-Weber was honored with the International Rising Talent Fellowship as part of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science, which included a monetary award of 20,000 euros. The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) bestowed upon her their Bronze Medal in 2019, acknowledging her groundbreaking contributions to understanding bee cognition.
Selected publications
- Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees (2009) Journal of Experimental Biology.
- Aversive Reinforcement Improves Visual Discrimination Learning in Free-Flying Honeybees (2010) PLOS ONE.
- Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees (2012) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- The forest or the trees: preference for global over local image processing is reversed by prior experience in honeybees (2014) Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
- Recognition of Human Face Images by the Free Flying Wasp Vespula vulgaris (2017) Animal Behavior and Cognition.
- Bumblebee social learning can lead to suboptimal foraging choices (2018) Animal Behaviour.
- Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks (2018) Frontiers in Psychology.
- Aminergic neuromodulation of associative visual learning in harnessed honey bees (2018) Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
- Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction (2019) Science Advances.
She has also authored articles detailing her research for the popular science publication Pour la Science.
Personal life
Avarguès-Weber is a parent to four children.