Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Volume 217, Issue 3, Pages 337-343Publisher
COMPANY OF BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.091355
Keywords
Apis mellifera; Classical conditioning; Proboscis extension response
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Funding
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)
- Butler University
- Office of Education of STRI
- Latin American Scholar fellowship of the STRI
- Scholarly Studies Grant of the Smithsonian Institution
- Smithsonian Institution
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Associative color learning has been demonstrated to be very poor using restrained European honey bees unless the antennae are amputated. Consequently, our understanding of proximate mechanisms in visual information processing is handicapped. Here we test learning performance of Africanized honey bees under restrained conditions with visual and olfactory stimulation using the proboscis extension response (PER) protocol. Restrained individuals were trained to learn an association between a color stimulus and a sugar-water reward. We evaluated performance for 'absolute' learning (learned association between a stimulus and a reward) and 'discriminant' learning (discrimination between two stimuli). Restrained Africanized honey bees (AHBs) readily learned the association of color stimulus for both blue and green LED stimuli in absolute and discriminatory learning tasks within seven presentations, but not with violet as the rewarded color. Additionally, 24-h memory improved considerably during the discrimination task, compared with absolute association (15-55%). We found that antennal amputation was unnecessary and reduced performance in AHBs. Thus color learning can now be studied using the PER protocol with intact AHBs. This finding opens the way towards investigating visual and multimodal learning with application of neural techniques commonly used in restrained honey bees.
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