Honeybee learning and memory

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Honeybee learning and memory
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AL
Honeybee brain
Moth AL
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Honeybee learning and memory
Bees learn and remember A LOT OF STUFF!!

• 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.

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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)

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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

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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

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Bee color learning
Bees can be trained to respond to any color
within their visual spectra range. Bees
preferentially learn blue-violet colors better
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Stimulus timing and learning
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Memory retention as a function of time and number
of trials
Memory traces as a function of of trials
Short term memory decay and establishment of
longer term memory
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Pattern learning
Differential conditioning to pattern orientation
and symmetry
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• 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
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Rule learning in honeybees
Bees can learn to respond to abstract image with
a specific orientation

• 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

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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
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Dance changes with orientation The position of
the sun is represented as top dead center.
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Communicating location accuracy
Angular variance of recruits to target
Distance variance of recruits to target