Honeybee learning and memory

Honeybee brain AL Moth AL

The location of their hive The location of a flower patch Which flowers in a patch that yield pollen and nectar based on: Color Shape Odor The way back home The vector to a food source deciphered from the dance of another bee. And much much more! Bees can communicate what they learn. Honeybee learning and memory Bees learn and remember A LOT OF STUFF!!

Honeybee olfactory learning Honeybee odor learning facts: Learn in as little as a single trial Remembers for life Latent inhibition/CS-pre-exposure effect Can discriminate between odors odorants with as little as 1-2 carbon unit differences Varieties of the same species of a flower based on odor cues (odor blends) Reversal learning (unlearning)

Psychophysics of odor learning: The relationship between CS and US timing The CS and US must occur in a specific temporal relationship: CS before US CS close to US in time

Honeybee color learning Bees fed in the presence of a color In test bees placed in a matrix of colors Bees congregate around feeding color

Bee color learning Bees can be trained to respond to any color within their visual spectra range. Bees preferentially learn blue-violet colors better

Stimulus timing and learning

Memory traces as a function of # of trials Short term memory decay and establishment of longer term memory Memory retention as a function of time and number of trials

Pattern learning Differential conditioning to pattern orientation and symmetry

Rule learning Two groups of bees were trained. One received symmetry training One received asymmetry training Eight successive triads of stimuli. Each training stimulus triad was interspersed with multiple-choice generalization tests. Test (unrewarded) stimuli consisted of novel symmetrical or asymmetrical stimuli. From the seventh generalization test onward, bees showed transfer to the appropriate novel stimulus. Three different transfer measures: choice frequency intensity per choice time per choice.

Rule learning in honeybees Honeybees can learn to navigate a novel maze based on rule sets: i.e. If yellow-blue then left turn If blue-yellow then right turn This also demonstrates color learning Bees can learn to respond to abstract image with a specific orientation

Communicating food/nest site location Waggle dance: food/nest site is 50m-2mi from hive Dance consists of: A figure-eight pattern of locomotion A cue that the location is not local A waggle at the intersection of the eight Indicates distance (duration of waggling) Direction (angle relative to the sun) Size of food source (variance of waggle) Quality of nest site overall duration of the dance Horizontal (outside) waggle points directly to food source

Dance changes with orientation The position of the sun is represented as top dead center.

Communicating location accuracy Angular variance of recruits to target Distance variance of recruits to target