Odor discrimination and latent inhibition in honeybees

FERNÁNDEZ, VANESA; ARENAS, ANDRÉS; FARINA, WALTER M

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Congreso; 14th Biennial scientific meeting of the international society for comparative psychology; 2008

Latent inhibition (LI) is a phenomenon by which the pre-exposure to a conditioned stimulus (CS) interferes the subsequent association of this CS with an unconditioned stimulus (US). We explored LI in the honeybee Apis mellifera, because its suitability to study some behaviors under controlled conditions. Bees were exposed to odors while reared under laboratory conditions. Then, their learning performances were evaluated at different intervals between the odor exposure and the differential classical conditioning performed within the proboscis extension response (PER) paradigm. A reduction in the odor discrimination was found in worker bees that were conditioning immediately after the olfactory exposure. However, we did not found a long-term effect on LI, neither by exposing an odor at higher concentrations nor by prolonging its exposure time. We discussed the short-lived LI found within the framework of the foraging activity of this highly social insect.