Behavioral and neural plasticity caused by early social experiences: the case of the honeybee

W.M. FARINA; G.P. RAMÍREZ; A. ARENAS

Congreso; XXVIII Congreso anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias. Reunión satélite ?NeuroetologÍa y Neurobiología de la Memoria en el cono sur?; 2013

Early experiences play an important role in shaping the future behavior inmammals but also in insects. In holometabolous insects, which suffer profoundchanges during metamorphosis, the effect of experiences acquired during preimaginalstages on the adult´s cognitive abilities is still unclear. Additionally,whether precocious appetitive experiences occurred in recently emerged adultsaffect learning performances has not yet been deeply studied. Honeybee is anexcellent model for assessing the role of experiences on later behavior due to itsversatility to respond under different experimental situations. Taking advantage ofthe fact that honeybees extend their proboscises as a reflex response to antennal stimulation with a sufficiently concentrated sugar solution, their olfactory memories can be analyzed, as bees that have associated a conditioned odor with sugar reward, protrude their proboscis when that stimulus is delivered onto the antennae. By using this procedure we found that pre-imaginal odor-rewarded experiences lead to olfactory memories in young adults. These precocious experiences also improve adult learning performance and memory retention toknown and novel odors. Moreover, rewarded experiences occurred during the first week of the adult; enhance retention performance in elder conditioned bees. Our results show that precocious experiences may allow honeybees to assess foodrelated information very early in life with consequences during their adulthood.