Honeybees, associative learning

Workers: Sterile females, do all work Queen:lays eggs Drones: males who mate with queen

-Food sources are nectar and pollen -Forage flowers year round, with exception of spring

-Remember which food sources are productive, so they can return -Identify new food sources based on knowledge of what has and has not been successful in past.

-Remember based on visual queus and position of sun -Communicate this info using special dance

-Olfactory queues -Communicate info with pollen caught in small leg hairs -Innate preferences for some colors and shapes

-antennae/proboscis comes into contact with sucrose

- Sound of metronome must be presented right before food.

Unconditioned stimulus- sucrose unconditioned response- PER extension responding to sucrose Neutral stimulus- odor Conditioned stimulus-odor Conditioned response- PER extension responding to odor.

Within minutes, learning goes down because consolidation is occurring

Short-term memory Midterm memory Long-term memory

Process of converting memory from a short term memory to longer term form (memory is temporarily unstable at time)

-Sensory receptor on the antenna -About 60,000 olfactory receptors/antenna -Project axons to antennal lobe

1. Odorant binds to receptor 2. Adenyl cyclase is activated producing cAMP 3. cAMP opens cyclic nucleotide gated channels allowing positive ions to flow into cell 4. Calcium influx opens calcium activated chloride channel (cl leaves cell) 5.

Opening of both these channels lead to depolarization

-Axons from sensory neurons terminate in glomeruli -160 glomeruli/antennal lobe -Some project axons to protocerebrum, some to mushroom body

-Integrates info from multiple sensory modalities -Each modality is located in specific area -Contains neurons called Kenyon cells

- Axon branches in two and each oe enters a different lobe of the mushroom body

-Both are necessary for olfactory learning. -If either area is inactivated by local cooling, the bee cannot make the association (time dependent)

Mushroom body neuron -receives input from Kenyon cells -Projects to the protocerebrum Inhibits motor responses-learning relieves this inhibition

-Can serve as US in PER conditioning (can sub for sucrose) -Releases octopamine -Odor has to be delivered shortly before sucrose -If octopamine receptors are knocked down, bee cannot learn association -VUMmx1 responds high only before association is learned.

-Weakened response when CS is presented without US -CR can be reacquired quite rapidly when CS is again paired with US

-Reappearance of CS following a rest period after extinction -Each time response recovers it is weaker and is extinguished more quickly

-The process of developing and strengthening a conditioned response -Asymptote- max amount of conditioning that can take place in situation (reach it faster with more intense stimuli)

-An animal learns from the discrepancy between what is expected to happen and what actually happens -More associative value if it is more suprising -When they aren't expecting it, learning is quick -When they expect it, odor has high associative value so learning is slow

-stimulus that is associated with a CS can also become a CS

-the presence of an established CS interferes with conditioning of a new CS -Consists of a neutral stimulus ad a CS