Food scents without reward: how them affect honeybee appetitive learning

FARINA, WALTER M

San Pablo

Congreso; XXXI Annual Ethology meeting; 2013

Sociedad Brasilera de Etologia

Animals must learn which of the environmental stimuli predict biologically meaningful events to survive. However, when a stimulus that has been exposed to the surroundings pretends to be associated with reinforcement, it is often difficult to establish a predictive relationship between both stimuli. This phenomenon has been defined as latent inhibition (LI) and was extensively studied in many animal species. Honeybees show LI when they cohabit into the hive and are exposed to many odors that might affect associative learning. Hive-exposed odors offered as a reinforced conditioning stimulus (CS) during acquisition promoted a learning-reduced effect. In contrast, no effect was found when the non-reinforced CS was pre-exposed. The effects of such exposure in individuals of different ages show no differences. This study was complemented with a pharmacological study to establish the putative aminergic signaling involved in LI. Biogenic amines have been shown to play important roles in honeybee learning and memory by modulating states of arousal, and specifically for the LI-signaling, serotonin (5-HT) might be involved. Then, it is possible to study the widespread behavioral phenomenon of LI at both the behavioral and the neural levels in honeybees and even to estimate how fast the chemosensory information among hive mates propagates according to the floral non-rewarded exposure characteristics.