IFIBYNE   05513
INSTITUTO DE FISIOLOGIA, BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Y NEUROCIENCIAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Age and rearing environment interact in the retention of early olfactory memories in honeybees
Autor/es:
ANDRÉS ARENAS; WALTER M. FARINA
Revista:
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY A-SENSORY NEURAL AND BEHAVIORAL PHYSIOLOGY
Editorial:
Springer
Referencias:
Año: 2008
ISSN:
0340-7594
Resumen:
Due to the changing behavioral contexts at
which social insects are exposed during the adult lifespan,
they are ideal models to analyze the effect of particular
sensory stimuli during young adulthood on later behavior.
Specifically, our goal is to understand early influences on
later foraging behavior. For that, olfactory memories were
established by worker honeybees to different pre-foraging
ages using either (1) classical conditioning in the proboscis
extension response (PER) paradigm or (2) the offering of
scented-sugar solution under different rearing conditions. By
testing long-term memories (LTM) through a single PER test
in workers of foraging ages (1725 days), we found that
retention of the early olfactory memories in honey bees is
age-dependent and not time-dependent. Independently of the
environmental conditions in which they were reared (laboratory
cages or hives), bees were able to retain food-odor
association from 5 days after emergence, but rarely before.
In most experiments we observed a bi-modal pattern
of response: bees exposed to scented-food at 58 and
1316 days showed better retention than those exposed at
912 days. These differences disappeared for bees reared in
hives. Retrieval of LTMs depending on the timing and the
continuous inputs of appropriate sensory stimuli are
discussed.