Effect of juvenile hormone on short-term olfactory memory in young honeybees (Apis mellifera).
Reliable retention of olfactory learning following a 1-trial classical conditioning of the proboscis extension reflex (PER) is not achieved in honeybees until they are 6-7 days old. Here we show that treatment of newly emerged honeybees with juvenile hormone (JH) has a profound effect on the maturation of short-term olfactory memory. JH-treated individuals display excellent short-term (1 h) memory of associative learning at times as early as 3 days of age and perform consistently better than untreated bees for at least the first week of their lives. By contrast, the retention of long-term (24 h) memory following a 3-trial conditioning of the PER is not significantly improved in JH-treated bees. Our study also shows that experience and (or) chemosensory activation are not essential to improve learning performance in olfactory tasks. The lack of accelerated development of long-term retention of olfactory memories in JH-treated honeybees is discussed in the context of neural circuits suspected to mediate memory formation and retrieval in the honeybee brain.
Maleszka
R
R
Visual Sciences, Research School of Biological Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. maleszka@rsbs.anu.edu.au
Helliwell
P
P
D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D002628:Chemoreceptor Cells / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000187:drug effects; D007605:Juvenile Hormones / Q000494:pharmacology*; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000187:drug effects*; D009812:Odorants; D012679:Sense Organs / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D012903:Smell / Q000187:drug effects*; D013268:Stimulation, Chemical
D007605:Juvenile Hormones