Pupils form Blackawton School working on the project. (Copyright: Beau Lotto)
A group of UK primary school children have achieved a world first by having their school science project accepted for publication in an internationally recognised peer-reviewed Royal Society journal. The paper, which reports novel findings in how bumblebees perceive colour, is published in Biology Letters today. The research was undertaken by 8-10 year old pupils at Blackawton School in Devon, who investigated the way that bumblebees see colours and patterns. The young scientists found evidence that bees are able to learn and remember cues based on colour and pattern in a spatially complex scene. The field of insect colour and pattern vision is generally poorly understood and the findings reported by the school children represent a genuine advance in the field. The project was coordinated and funded by Dr Beau Lotto, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. Dr Lotto is currently developing a 'living lab' at London's Science Museum, funded by the Wellcome Trust, which enables the public, including school children, to participate, design and run real science experiments on site.
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