Full metadata
Title
The Effect of Antennae Movement Restriction on Odor Discrimination in Honeybees (Apis Mellifera)
Description
Honeybees require the use of their antennae to perceive different scents and pheromones, communicate with other members of the colony, and even detect wind vibrations, sound waves, and carbon dioxide levels. Limiting and/or removing this sense makes bees much less effective at acquiring information. However, how antennal movements might be important for olfaction has not been studied in detail. The focus of this work was to evaluate how restriction of antennae movements might affect a bee’s ability to detect and perceive odors. Bees were made to learn a certain odor and were then split up into a control group, a treatment group that had their antennae fixed with eicosane, and a sham treatment group that had a dot of eicosane on their heads in such a way that it would not affect antennae movements but still add the same amount of weight. Following a period of acclimation, the bees were tested with the conditioned odor, one that was perceptually similar to it, and to a dissimilar odor. Using proboscis-extension duration and latency as response measures, it became clear that both antenna fixation and sham treatments affected the conditioned behavior. However, these treatment effects did not reach statistical significance. Briefly, both fixation of antennae as well as the sham treatment reduced the discriminability of the conditioned and similar odors. Although more data can be collected to more fully evaluate the significance of the treatments, the behavior of the sham group could indicate that mechanoreceptive hairs on the head play an important role in olfaction. It is also possible that there are other factors at play, possibly induced by the fixed bees’ increased stress levels.
Date Created
2021
Contributors
- Hozan, Alvin Robert (Author)
- Smith, Brian H (Thesis advisor)
- Lei, Hong (Committee member)
- Cook, Chelsea (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
28 pages
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.161944
Level of coding
minimal
Cataloging Standards
Note
Partial requirement for: M.S., Arizona State University, 2021
Field of study: Biology
System Created
- 2021-11-16 05:23:44
System Modified
- 2021-11-30 12:51:28
- 2 years 11 months ago
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