Aurore Avarguès-Weber

Aurore Avarguès-Weber (born 1983) is a French cognitive neuroscientist and ethologist who is researching the behaviour of bees at the Centre de Recherche sur la Cognition Animale in Toulouse.

Aurore Avarguès-Weber
Born1983 (age 39–40)
Givry, Saône-et-Loire, France
Alma materUniversité Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier
Children2
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis[ Cognition visuelle chez l'abeille Apis mellifera: Catégorisation par extraction de configurations spatiales et de concepts relationnels] (2010)
Doctoral advisorMartin Giurfa
Other academic advisors
  • Lars Chittka
  • Jean-Christophe Sandoz

In 2015, for investigating the brain mechanisms of visual cognition of social insects, she received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, one of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science.[1][2] She has also received a CNRS Bronze Medal.

Early life

Avarguès-Weber is from Givry, in France.[3] After graduating high school in Chalon-sur-Saône, she chose to study in a Classe Préparatoire in Lyon, and developed a passion for biology and physiology.[4]

Education and research

Avarguès-Weber studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan.[4] She then researched her PhD in the lab of Martin Giurfa at the Research Centre for Animal Cognition (Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, CRCA) in Toulouse, defending her thesis in 2010.[5] She then undertook two post-doctoral research positions, one under Lars Chittka at Queen Mary University, and one with Jean-Christophe Sandoz in Gif-sur-Yvette.[5]

She currently works in the CRCA's EXPerience-dependent PLAsticity in INsects (EXPLAIN) team.[5] Though she initially wanted to study orangutans, Avarguès-Weber has focused on bees since 2007.[6] The results of her research have implications for both computer science and facial recognition.[3] Amongst other things, her lab has shown that bees are capable of numerical cognition and mathematical abstraction: they can add and subtract, and they recognise the concept of zero.[7][8][9] She has also shown that bees can recognise face-like patterns.[10] She is currently developing a virtual reality system to test more complex abilities of bees.[11]

Awards and achievements

Averguès-Weber has received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, and was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2015, along with prize money of 20,000 euros.[3][1][2] In 2019, she received the Bronze Medal from the CNRS, the French national centre for scientific research.[12] The Bronze Medal recognises the first works of researchers; Averguès-Weber was recognised for her work on the cognition of bees.[12]

Selected publications
  • Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees (2009) Journal of Experimental Biology.[10]
  • Aversive Reinforcement Improves Visual Discrimination Learning in Free-Flying Honeybees (2010) PLOS ONE[13]
  • Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees (2012) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[14]
  • 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 [15]
  • Recognition of Human Face Images by the Free Flying Wasp Vespula vulgaris (2017) Animal Behavior and Cognition [16]
  • Bumblebee social learning can lead to suboptimal foraging choices (2018) Animal Behaviour. 135: 209–214.[17]
  • Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks (2018) Frontiers in Psychology [18]
  • Aminergic neuromodulation of associative visual learning in harnessed honey bees (2018) Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 155: 556–567.[19]
  • Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction (2019) Science Advances [7]

She has also written articles about her research for the general public for the magazine Pour la Science.[20][21]

Personal life

Avarguès-Weber has four children.[4]

References
  1. "Avarguès-Weber, Aurore ; 1983-" (in French). Archipel: Université de Toulouse. Archived from the original on 21 November 2015. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  2. "2015 International Rising Talent" (in French). L'Oréal. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  3. "Recherche. - Une des 20 bourses L'Oréal-Unesco pour les femmes et la science a été attribuée à une Givrotine.. Une chercheuse émérite primée". www.lejsl.com (in French). Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  4. "Aurore Avarguès-Weber, butineuse de savoirs". La Croix (in French). 2015-05-22. ISSN 0242-6056. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  5. "Aurore Averguès-Weber". Toulouse Mind and Brain Institute. Archived from the original on 2020-11-30. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  6. "Aurore Avarguès-Weber, la recherche au féminin". Mid&Plus (in French). 2016-09-08. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  7. Howard, Scarlett R.; Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Garcia, Jair E.; Greentree, Andrew D.; Dyer, Adrian G. (2019-02-06). "Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction". Science Advances. 5 (2): eaav0961. Bibcode:2019SciA....5..961H. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav0961. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 6365119. PMID 30775440.
  8. Howard, Scarlett R.; Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Garcia, Jair E.; Greentree, Andrew D.; Dyer, Adrian G. (2018-06-08). "Numerical ordering of zero in honey bees". Science. 360 (6393): 1124–1126. Bibcode:2018Sci...360.1124H. doi:10.1126/science.aar4975. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 29880690.
  9. Nell Greenfieldboyce (7 June 2018). "Math Bee: Honeybees Seem To Understand The Notion Of Zero". NPR.org. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  10. Avargues-Weber, A.; Portelli, G.; Benard, J.; Dyer, A.; Giurfa, M. (2010-02-15). "Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees". Journal of Experimental Biology. 213 (4): 593–601. doi:10.1242/jeb.039263. ISSN 0022-0949. PMID 20118310.
  11. "Edition du soir Ouest France". www.ouest-france.fr. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  12. "Congratulations to Aurore Avarguès-Weber !". Research Center on Animal Cognition. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  13. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Sanchez, Maria G. de Brito; Giurfa, Martin; Dyer, Adrian G. (2010-10-15). "Aversive Reinforcement Improves Visual Discrimination Learning in Free-Flying Honeybees". PLOS ONE. 5 (10): e15370. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...515370A. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015370. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 2955543. PMID 20976170.
  14. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Dyer, Adrian G.; Combe, Maud; Giurfa, Martin (2012-05-08). "Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (19): 7481–7486. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.7481A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1202576109. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3358847. PMID 22517740.
  15. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Dyer, Adrian G.; Ferrah, Noha; Giurfa, Martin (2015-01-22). "The forest or the trees: preference for global over local image processing is reversed by prior experience in honeybees". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 282 (1799): 20142384. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.2384. PMC 4286040. PMID 25473017.
  16. Avarguès-Weber, A.; d'Amaro, D.; Metzler, M.; Garcia, J.E.; Dyer, A.G. (2017). "Recognition of Human Face Images by the Free Flying Wasp Vespula vulgaris". Animal Behavior and Cognition. 4 (3): 314–323. doi:10.26451/abc.04.03.09.2017. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  17. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Lachlan, Robert; Chittka, Lars (2018-01-01). "Bumblebee social learning can lead to suboptimal foraging choices". Animal Behaviour. 135: 209–214. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.11.022. ISSN 0003-3472. S2CID 51937660.
  18. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; d’Amaro, Daniele; Metzler, Marita; Finke, Valerie; Baracchi, David; Dyer, Adrian G. (2018). "Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks". Frontiers in Psychology. 9: 1313. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01313. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 6079261. PMID 30108535.
  19. Mancini, Nino; Giurfa, Martin; Sandoz, Jean-Christophe; Avarguès-Weber, Aurore (2018-11-01). "Aminergic neuromodulation of associative visual learning in harnessed honey bees". Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 155: 556–567. doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2018.05.014. ISSN 1074-7427. PMID 29793042. S2CID 44062242.
  20. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore. "L'intelligence des abeilles". Pourlascience.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  21. Avarguès-Weber, Aurore. "Pas folle, l'abeille". Pourlascience.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-09-22.
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