Monday, December 10, 2007 - 2:59 PM
0702

Proximal influences on time-memory acquisition in honey bee (Apis mellifera) foragers

Darrell Moore, moored@etsu.edu, East Tennessee State University, Department of Biological Sciences, P.O. Box 70703, Johnson City, TN

The honey bee forager has the ability to associate the presence of food with the time of day of its occurrence. This time-memory is based upon a continuously consulted circadian oscillator and is expressed as food-anticipatory activity at the appropriate time of day. In this study, several factors (the number of rewards, the number of days of training, the presence or absence of odor during training) experienced by the forager bee during time-training to artificial food sources were examined for their potential to (1) elicit food-anticipatory activity, (2) influence the temporal accuracy of time-memory expression, and (3) control the intensity of food-anticipatory behavior. The results indicate that the honey bee time-memory is more complex than previously thought: different experiential factors influence different aspects of time-memory behavior.


Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)