Effects of Olfactory Conditioning on Gustatory Responsiveness in Apis mellifera

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Description
In Apis mellifera, gustatory responsiveness to sucrose is a good indicator of learning ability \u2014 in that individuals with high sucrose responsiveness will typically form faster, longer-lasting associations with conditioned stimulus than individuals with a low sucrose responsiveness. The purpose…

In Apis mellifera, gustatory responsiveness to sucrose is a good indicator of learning ability \u2014 in that individuals with high sucrose responsiveness will typically form faster, longer-lasting associations with conditioned stimulus than individuals with a low sucrose responsiveness. The purpose of this study was to determine whether experience with olfactory conditioning had lasting effects on gustatory responsiveness. Groups were placed in an environment that would facilitate association of an odor to a sucrose reward, tested for retention, then tested for gustatory responsiveness. Control groups underwent the same testing schedule, but were not exposed to odor in the first environment. There was no significant difference in gustatory responsiveness between the two groups. Mann-Whitney tests were used to analyze the results, and though the mean GRS score was lower among the treatment group there was no significant trend, possibly due to small sample sizes.
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

The Role of the Biogenic Amine Tyramine in Latent Inhibition Learning in the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera

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Description
Animals must learn to ignore stimuli that are irrelevant to survival, a process referred to as latent inhibition. The Amtyr1 gene has been shown through quantitative trait loci mapping to be linked to strong latent inhibition in honey bees. Here…

Animals must learn to ignore stimuli that are irrelevant to survival, a process referred to as latent inhibition. The Amtyr1 gene has been shown through quantitative trait loci mapping to be linked to strong latent inhibition in honey bees. Here we implicate this G-protein coupled receptor for the biogenic amine tyramine as an important factor underlying this form of learning in honey bees. We show that dsRNA targeted to disrupt the tyramine receptors, specifically affects latent inhibition but not excitatory associative conditioning. Our results therefore identify a distinct reinforcement pathway for latent inhibition in insects.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

Mice Olfaction and Habituation on Strawberries through Utilization of an Odorized Hole-Board Arena

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Description
The mammalian olfactory system is commonly studied by using the mouse as a model system. Odor habituation is used to investigate odor perception and learning processes. Most previous experimental preparations have been tedious, requiring a researcher to manually change odorants,…

The mammalian olfactory system is commonly studied by using the mouse as a model system. Odor habituation is used to investigate odor perception and learning processes. Most previous experimental preparations have been tedious, requiring a researcher to manually change odorants, record investigation time and duration at each odorant, or physical alteration on the mice to enable video tracking. These limitations were overcame by creating an odorized hole-board to allow for systematic and automatic recording of olfactory behavior in mice. A cohort of five male mice were utilized in these experiments and the responses to the odor of strawberries, a diet staple of wile mice, were examined. Experiment 1 showed that free-feeding mice exhibit a preference to locations with strawberry (over control locations), even when these locations can only be identified using olfaction. This preference habituates within a trial but not across days. Experiment 2 showed that strawberry odor without reward causes habituation or extinction to the odor both within trials and across days. From these experiments, it can be concluded that mice innately explore strawberry odor and this can be exploited to the study odor habituation using an odorized hole-board.
Date Created
2016-12
Agent

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and its Application on Behavior Modification in Adolescents with High Functioning Autism

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Description
Asperger's syndrome is a high-functioning subset of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Diagnosed patients often lack refined social skills but possess a normal level of cognitive skills without delay in language development. These deficient social skills can impact the ability to…

Asperger's syndrome is a high-functioning subset of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Diagnosed patients often lack refined social skills but possess a normal level of cognitive skills without delay in language development. These deficient social skills can impact the ability to find and maintain a job, which can be burdensome for all individuals involved in the patient's life. Although the causes of this condition are largely unknown, a wide variety of social and cognitive therapies have been used to reduce symptom severity, one of which is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Mindfulness is the act of being aware on purpose to whatever is being experienced in the present moment with non-judgment and receptivity. MBSR has been used to bring greater awareness to sensations, thoughts and emotions with the result being reduced reactivity and increased purposeful responsiveness. It is therefore the aim of this study to address the use of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in adolescents with clinical Asperger's Syndrome to reduce reactive tendencies. This study will utilize a randomized control group of waitlisted participants given MBSR informational material and a practicing MBSR group. Post-MBSR Parent Global Impressions-III (PGI-III) and Social Responsiveness Scale scores are hypothesized to be improved in MBSR group and unaffected in the control for behavioral markers with no change in core autistic symptoms. Daily average cortisol response is also expected to decrease in the experimental group with unaffected levels in the control.
Date Created
2017-05
Agent

Associative Recognition of Odor Stimuli Variance and a Proposal to Test This in Odor Experience Restricted Honey Bees

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Description
Recent data suggests that olfactory input is important for antennal lobe development in honey bees. Chronic association of a single odor to food resources during crucial stages of development results in delayed antennal lobe development for mature foraging bees. The…

Recent data suggests that olfactory input is important for antennal lobe development in honey bees. Chronic association of a single odor to food resources during crucial stages of development results in delayed antennal lobe development for mature foraging bees. The antennal lobes of these bees instead closely resemble an immature network observed in young, newly emerged bees. Using an odor stimuli variance assay, learning and memory tests can be used to explore how well honey bees discriminate single odors within complex odor mixtures. Here we are validating two different odor mixtures, a Brassica rapa floral blend and a second replicate mixture composed of common molecularly dissimilar odors. Odors in each mixture are either held constant or varied in concentration over 16 conditioning trials. Subsequent memory tests are performed two hours later to observe the ability of bees to distinguish and recognize specific odor components in each mixture. So far in our assay we find high rates of generalization for both odor mixtures. In general, more bees responded to all odors in the replicate treatment group over the Brassica treatment group. Additionally, bees in the Brassica treatment group did not respond to the target odor. More data is being collected to validate this assay. In future studies, I propose to apply this behavioral assay to bees with an altered olfactory developmental in order to see the functional impacts of this chronic odor association treatment.
Date Created
2017-05
Agent

Natural Odor Processing in Fruit Flies

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Description
Fruit flies show a strong attraction to fruit odors. Most fruit odors, including strawberry scent, are complex multimolecular mixtures comprised of many chemically distinct constituents. How animals are able to process these mixtures and derive behaviorally relevant information is…

Fruit flies show a strong attraction to fruit odors. Most fruit odors, including strawberry scent, are complex multimolecular mixtures comprised of many chemically distinct constituents. How animals are able to process these mixtures and derive behaviorally relevant information is largely unknown. A new procedure was created to test odor preference for Heisenberg canton-s strain of Drosophila melanogaster. 30 flies were cold anesthetized at 4.2°C for 30 minutes and then placed in a testing arena. After acclimating for 45 minutes, the flies were exposed to two sources of air, one with ripe strawberry odor and one with only humidified air. Images were captured every minute for an hour and a preference index was calculated for every 10th image. The Drosophila had a positive average preference for the strawberry odor. Five out of six trials showed a general increase in odor preference over the course of the trial. While there was a generally positive trend for average preference over time, there was not a significant increase in average odor preference from time 1 to time 60. The data indicates that Drosophila show a preference for strawberry odor over humidified air, and we propose to extend this test to investigate how Drosophila process and react to complex odors and their chemical constituents.
Date Created
2017-05
Agent

The effect of Pristine fungicide on honey bee (Apis mellifera) taste and responsiveness to sucrose

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Description
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies have experienced substantial losses due to colony collapse disorder (CCD) since the first officially reported cases in 2006. Many factors have been implicated in CCD, including pests, pathogens, malnutrition, and pesticide use, but no correlation…

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies have experienced substantial losses due to colony collapse disorder (CCD) since the first officially reported cases in 2006. Many factors have been implicated in CCD, including pests, pathogens, malnutrition, and pesticide use, but no correlation has been found between a single factor and the occurrence of CCD. Fungicides have received less research attention compared to insecticides, despite the fact that fungicide application coincides with bloom and the presence of bees. Pristine fungicide is widely used in agriculture and is commonly found as a residue in hives. Several studies have concluded that Pristine can be used without harming bees, but reports of brood loss following Pristine application continue to surface across the country. The primary objectives of this study were to determine whether Pristine causes an aversive gustatory response in bees and whether consumption of an acute dose affects responsiveness to sucrose. An awareness of how foragers interact with contaminated food is useful to understand the likelihood that Pristine is ingested and how that may affect bees' ability to evaluate floral resources. Our results indicated that Pristine has no significant effect on gustatory response or sucrose responsiveness. There was no significant difference between bee responses to Pristine contaminated sucrose and sucrose alone, and no significant effect of Pristine on sucrose responsiveness. These results indicate that honey bees do not have a gustatory aversion to Pristine. A lack of aversion means that honey bees will continue collecting contaminated resources and dispersing them throughout the colony where it can affect brood and clean food stores.
Date Created
2015-05
Agent

Investigation of Sniffing as a Viable Measure of Odor Habituation in Mice

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Description
Mammalian olfaction relies on active sniffing, which both shapes and is shaped by olfactory stimuli. Habituation to repeated exposure of an olfactory stimuli is believed to be mediated by decreased sniffing; however, this decrease may be reserved by exposure to…

Mammalian olfaction relies on active sniffing, which both shapes and is shaped by olfactory stimuli. Habituation to repeated exposure of an olfactory stimuli is believed to be mediated by decreased sniffing; however, this decrease may be reserved by exposure to novel odorants. Because of this, it may be possible to use sniffing itself as a measure of novelty, and thus as a measure of odorant similarity. Thus, I investigated the use of sniffing to measure habituation, cross-habituation, and odorant similarity. During habituation experiments, increases in sniff rate seen in response to odorant presentation decreased in magnitude between the first and second presentations, suggesting of habituation. Some of this reduction in sniff rate increases was revered by the presentation of a novel odorant in cross-habituations. However the effect sizes in cross-habituation experiments were low, and the variability high, forestalling the conclusion that sniffing accurately measured cross-habituation. I discuss improvements to the experimental protocol that may allow for cross-habituation to be more accurately measured using sniffing alone in future experiments.
Date Created
2015-12
Agent

To what degree can bees identify visual patterns that differ in spatial frequency?

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Description
This study illustrates the abilities of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, to learn and differentiate between patterns solely off their spatial frequencies. Patterns were chosen based off of calculations derived from the measurements of the physical construction of the apposition compound…

This study illustrates the abilities of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, to learn and differentiate between patterns solely off their spatial frequencies. Patterns were chosen based off of calculations derived from the measurements of the physical construction of the apposition compound eye, which led to predictions of what the bees could theoretically see. The hypothesis was then that bees would have a visual threshold where patterns with spatial frequencies that fall below this line should be easily distinguishable, and patterns above the threshold would have scores that mimic if the bees made choices randomly. There were 9 patterns tested, all with different spatial frequencies and in the colors of black, white, and gray. The bees were tested on their learning and pattern differentiation abilities with 10 pattern comparisons, with the lower frequency of the two being associated with an unscented sucrose solution reward. The results were surprising in that the previous studies pointing towards this visual threshold were inaccurate because of some of the patterns being learning in an intermediate ability. These intermediate scores suggest that the calculations predicting what the bees could see clearly were slightly wrong because it was more likely that the bees saw those images in more of a blur, which resulted in their intermediate score. Honeybees have served as a useful model organisms over the decades with studying learning involving visual information. This study lacked in its total numbers of trials and bees tested, which could have led to incomplete results, and this showing of an intermediate score and ability. Future studies should continue in order to advance this understanding of a perceptually and cognitively advance processing animal.
Date Created
2015-12
Agent

Task Allocation and Site Fidelity Jointly Influence Foraging Regulation in Honeybee Colonies

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Description

Variation in behaviour among group members often impacts collective outcomes. Individuals may vary both in the task that they perform and in the persistence with which they perform each task. Although both the distribution of individuals among tasks and differences…

Variation in behaviour among group members often impacts collective outcomes. Individuals may vary both in the task that they perform and in the persistence with which they perform each task. Although both the distribution of individuals among tasks and differences among individuals in behavioural persistence can each impact collective behaviour, we do not know if and how they jointly affect collective outcomes. Here, we use a detailed computational model to examine the joint impact of colony-level distribution among tasks and behavioural persistence of individuals, specifically their fidelity to particular resource sites, on the collective trade-off between exploring for new resources and exploiting familiar ones. We developed an agent-based model of foraging honeybees, parametrized by data from five colonies, in which we simulated scouts, who search the environment for new resources, and individuals who are recruited by the scouts to the newly found resources, i.e. recruits. We varied the persistence of returning to a particular food source of both scouts and recruits and found that, for each value of persistence, there is a different optimal ratio of scouts to recruits that maximizes resource collection by the colony. Furthermore, changes to the persistence of scouts induced opposite effects from changes to the persistence of recruits on the collective foraging of the colony. The proportion of scouts that resulted in the most resources collected by the colony decreased as the persistence of recruits increased. However, this optimal proportion of scouts increased as the persistence of scouts increased. Thus, behavioural persistence and task participation can interact to impact a colony's collective behaviour in orthogonal directions. Our work provides new insights and generates new hypotheses into how variations in behaviour at both the individual and colony levels jointly impact the trade-off between exploring for new resources and exploiting familiar ones.

Date Created
2017-08-30
Agent
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