Comparison of learning and memory of Apis cerana and Apis mellifera
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Comparison of learning and memory of Apis cerana and Apis mellifera Qiu-Hong Qin • Xu-Jiang He • Liu-Qing Tian Shao-Wu Zhang • Zhi-Jiang Zeng
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Received: 21 June 2012 / Revised: 31 July 2012 / Accepted: 5 August 2012 / Published online: 25 August 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract The honeybee is an excellent model organism for research on learning and memory among invertebrates. Learning and memory in honeybees has intrigued neuroscientists and entomologists in the last few decades, but attention has focused almost solely on the Western honeybee, Apis mellifera. In contrast, there have been few studies on learning and memory in the Eastern honeybee, Apis cerana. Here we report comparative behavioral data of color and grating learning and memory for A. cerana and A. mellifera in China, gathered using a Y-maze apparatus. We show for the first time that the learning and memory performance of A. cerana is significantly better on both color and grating patterns than that of A. mellifera. This study provides the first evidence of a learning and memory difference between A. cerana and A. mellifera under controlled conditions, and it is an important basis for the further study of the mechanism of learning and memory in honeybees. Keywords Apis cerana Apis mellifera Learning and memory Color Grating
Q.-H. Qin X.-J. He L.-Q. Tian Z.-J. Zeng (&) Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] S.-W. Zhang (&) ARC Center of Excellence in Vision Science, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Abbreviations A. mellifera Apis mellifera A. cerana Apis cerana CCD Colony collapse disorder
Introduction The honeybee offers several advantages as a model organism for studying learning and memory, including a relatively simple brain structure, social organization allowing easy rearing, and a complex behavioral repertoire, which is readily manipulated. Although a honeybee has only a tiny brain that has only about 1 million nerve cells in it (only one hundred-thousandth of the human), it has an amazing ability to learn and remember tasks and objects (Menzel 1990, 2001; Giurfa et al. 1996, 2001; Zhang et al. 1996, 1999, 2000, 2004; Giurfa 2007). Learning and memory performances in honeybees were quantified in a color learning experiment by Menzel (1967, 1968) for the first time; this initiated an interest in honeybees learning and memory research. Since then, it has been found that honeybees can not only learn to distinguish different colors and orientations (Hateren et al. 1990; Zhang and Srinivasan 1994), but can also extract abstract concepts from visual patterns (Giurfa et al. 2001; Zhang et al. 2005; Pahl et al. 2007; Gross et al. 2009; Avargues-Weber et al. 2011; Avargues-Weber et al. 2012). However, most research attention in this field has centered on Western honeybees, and as a result, the learning and memory capabilities of mos
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