Critical ages for memory retention in honeybees

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

Buenos Aires, Argentina

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

Honeybees of 17 days old were able to retain food-odor association from five days after emergence, but rarely before. However, bees reared under laboratory conditions showed better retention at 17 days of age if they were exposed to a scented-food at 5-8 days than those bees exposed at 9-12 days. This demonstrates that retention of early olfactory memories is age-dependent and not time-dependent stating the hypothesis that the lifespan 5-8 days of the adulthood is critical for the retention of olfactory memories. To test this, memories were established by the offering of scented-sugar solution to different adult ages: 1-4, 5-8 and 9-12 days. In addition, groups conditioned at 5-8 and 9-12 days old were also conditioned to a second odor (non-tested odor) at the ages of 1-4 and 5-8 days old respectively. Long-term memories (LTM) were evaluated in the Pavlovian context of the proboscis extension response (PER) paradigm. Results showed different levels of retrieval between treatments: bees exposed to a scented food at 5-8 days of age and 9-12-day-old conditioned bees with a prior exposition to a second scented food also at 5-8 days old had the highest levels of conditioned response at 17 days old. We discussed the retrieval of LTMs depending on the continuous inputs of sensory stimuli occurring during this particular lifespan of the honeybee.