Bombs Away! Homeland Security "Buzzes" with Bee LearningBiology 342 Fall 2012by Matthew Keeslar and Alexandra Bryn Mariani |
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MechanismThe bee brain has less than a million neurons (Witthoft 1969) and yet can navigate long distances, learn complex topography, and distinguish a vast wealth of olfactory cues. Bees accomplish these tasks with two large compound eyes and with the 60,000 olfactory receptors in located in their antennae (Vareschi 1971). Although bee eyes have low acuity, they are optimized for fast, in-flight maneuvers and can detect UV radiation as well as polarized light. The ability to see polarized light and UV raditaion enables bees to recognize patterns on flowers that reflect UV light (Rossel and Wehner 1993). The scent of a particular flower also coaxes a bee back to its corresponding food source. Memory
PER
PER could possibly be a fixed action pattern related to feeding behavior, because this reflex can reduce foraging time. It is used as a way to measure a bee's memory; a bee with a good memory will exhibit PER whenever it remembers an odor, and a bee with a bad memory will not.
Bees Prioritize Their Own ExperienceEven more amazingly, sometimes a given bee will rely more on its own memories of food outside of the hive, rather than paying attention to new smells and other information circulating about the hive. (Mc Cabe and Farina 2010) However, stingless bees still will successfully recruit other bees to return to a food source with them. These recruited bees do in fact show a preference toward familiar (the smell on the recruiter bee) versus unfamiliar smells. (Reichle, Jarau et al. 2010) Interestingly, bees were shown to better distinguish two odors in the dark. (Lehmann, Gustav et al. 2011) However, this makes sense due to the fact that bees are likeliest to learn scents from other bees while in the hive, which is dark. |