D-039 | The Quality of the Previous Day’s Meal Affects Gustatory Sensitivity and the Formation of Appetitive Memories in Honeybees

Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Anahí Cintia Charalambous | Email: anahichara4@gmail.com

Anahí Cintia Charalambous^1°2°, Milagros Azcueta^1°2°, Agustin Lara^1°2°,  Romina B. Barrozo^3°4°, Fernando Locatelli^1°2°, Martin Klappenbach^1°2°

^1° Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias, CONICET
^2° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular
^3° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Laboratorio de Neuroetologia de Insectos
^4° Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada, UBA-CONICET

During foraging and back in the colony, honey bees (Apis mellifera) are capable of assessing quality of different food sources. In our lab, we recently demonstrated that bees stabilize stronger associative memories when the quality of the unconditioned stimulus exceeds previous experiences. Accordingly, honey bees whose reward expectations are frustrated show weaker memory retention, indicating that bees perform a subjective evaluation of the reward based on their most recent consumption. Here, we aim to elucidate whether such plasticity in reward assessment emerges at the level of detection or is it a central cognitive process.
We conducted behavioral experiments on honeybees and electrophysiology experiments on single sensilla of the anetanne, revealing that sugar sensitivity is modified according to previous experience. To address whether this change in sensitivity leads to differences in learning, we trained bees to associate antennal stimulation with sucrose to an odor, without post-ingestive reinforcement, and observed differences depending on the bees’ previous experiences. These findings suggest that experience modulates the strength of the reward sensed peripherally, thereby affecting learning and memory.
Furthermore, we demonstrated that the training protocol using antennal contact can generate long-term memory if post-ingestive reinforcement is provided a few hours later. Notably, this effect is also dependent on the bees’s prior experience