Behavioral and neural plasticity caused by early social experiences: the case of the honeybee

• Autores: Arenas, Andres; Ramirez, Gabriela Paola; Balbuena, María Sol; Farina, Walter Marcelo
• Año de publicación: 2013
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: APIS MELLIFERA; BEHAVIOR; ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING; EARLY EXPERIENCES
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Cognitive experiences during the early stages of life play an important role in shaping future behavior. Behavioral and neural long-term changes after early sensory and associative experiences have been recently reported in the honeybee. This invertebrate is an excellent model for assessing the role of precocious experiences on later behavior due to its extraordinarily tuned division of labor based on age polyethism. These studies are mainly focused on the role and importance of experiences occurred during the first days of the adult lifespan, their impact on foraging decisions, and their contribution to coordinate food gathering. Odor-rewarded experiences during the first days of honeybee adulthood alter the responsiveness to sucrose, making young hive bees more sensitive to assess gustatory features about the nectar brought back to the hive and affecting the dynamic of the food transfers and the propagation of food-related information within the colony. Early olfactory experiences lead to stable and long-term associative memories that can be successfully recalled after many days, even at foraging ages. Also they improve memorizing of new associative learning events later in life. The establishment of early memories promotes stable reorganization of the olfactory circuits inducing structural and functional changes in the antennal lobe (AL). Early rewarded experiences have relevant consequences at the social level too, biasing dance and trophallaxis partner choice and affecting recruitment. Here, we revised recent results in bees´ physiology, behavior, and sociobiology to depict how the early experiences affect their cognition abilities and neural-related circuits.
Fil: Arenas, Andres. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiol., Biol.molecular y Neurociencias; Argentina;
Fil: Ramirez, Gabriela Paola. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiol., Biol.molecular y Neurociencias; Argentina;
Fil: Balbuena, María Sol. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiol., Biol.molecular y Neurociencias; Argentina;
Fil: Farina, Walter Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Fisiol., Biol.molecular y Neurociencias; Argentina;