Early learning within a social context in the honey bee Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

FARINA WALTER M.

Maceió

Simposio; IX Congreso Latino-americano de Entomología; 2016

Sociedad Brasilera de Entomologia

In eusocial insects, experiences acquired during the development have long-term consequences on mature behavior. In the honey bee, which suffers profound changes associated with metamorphosis, the effect of odor experiences at larval instars on the subsequent physiological and behavioral response is still unclear. To address the impact of preimaginal experiences on the adult honeybee, colonies containing larvae were fed with 1-hexanol (1-HEX) scented food. The effect of the preimaginal experiences with the food odor was assessed in learning performance, memory retention and generalization procedure in young and mature adult bees, in the regulation of their expression of synaptic-related genes and in the perception and morphology of their antennae. Young bees performed better in the 1-HEX conditioning than control bees reared in colonies fed unscented food. This group of young bees also exhibited a normal gradient of decreasing generalization responses to increasingly dissimilar odorants. This was not the observed for the older bee group. In the brain of young adults, larval experiences triggered similar levels between neurexins and neuroligins expression, two proteins that have been involved in synaptic formation after associative learning. At the sensory periphery, the experience did not alter the number of the olfactory sensilla placoidea, but did reduce the electrical response of the antennae to the learned and novel odor. Our study provides a new insight into the effects of preimaginal experiences in the honeybee and the mechanisms underlying olfactory plasticity at larval stage of holometabolous insects.