Cognitive aging is linked to social role in honey bees (Apis mellifera)
Cognitive aging is linked to social role in honey bees (Apis mellifera)
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DOI：
10.1016/j.exger.2007.09.003
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发表时间：
2007-12-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Amdam, Gro V.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Behrends, Andreas;Scheiner, Ricarda;Amdam, Gro V.
衰老与许多动物物种的认知障碍有关。在整个分类群中，学习成绩的下降与实际年龄有关。相反，蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）提供了一个研究衰老的这些方面的机会，这些方面在很大程度上与年龄本身无关。这是因为觅食的开始可以与实际年龄脱钩，尽管工蜂通常首先在巢内执行任务，然后在蜂巢外觅食。此外，觅食的早期阶段的特点是特定的脑神经堆的生长，而觅食生命阶段的后期阶段伴随着生理衰老的加速。然而，目前还不清楚这些衰老模式是否包括认知功能。然而，工蜂个体发育的灵活性表明，蜜蜂可以成为研究认知老化可塑性的一个有吸引力的模型，最终可能导致对与年龄相关的认知衰退机制的深入了解。为了解决这种潜力，我们研究了蜜蜂的年龄和社会角色对感官灵敏度和联想嗅觉学习性能的影响。我们的研究结果表明，嗅觉获得性能的下降与社会角色有关，但与实际年龄无关。这种下降只发生在觅食持续时间长的觅食，但在同一时间的觅食表现出较少的泛化气味，这是更精确的学习的指示。此外，从觅食到筑巢任务的觅食者在嗅觉获取方面没有表现出缺陷。这些结果指出了衰老对蜜蜂联想学习的复杂影响。(c)2007年爱思唯尔公司All rights reserved.
Aging is associated with cognitive impairment in numerous animal species. Across taxa, decline in learning performance is linked to chronological age. The honey bee (Apis mellifera), in contrast, offers an opportunity to study such aspects of aging largely independent of age per se. This is because foraging onset can be decoupled from chronological age, although workers typically first perform tasks inside the nest and later forage outside the hive. Further, early phases of foraging are characterized by growth of specific brain neuropiles, whereas late phases of the forager life-stage are accompanied by accelerated rates of physiological senescence. Yet, it is unclear if these patterns of senescence include cognitive function. The flexibility of worker ontogeny, however, suggests that the bee can become an attractive model for studies of plasticity in cognitive aging that ultimately may lead to insight into mechanisms that govern age-related cognitive decline. To address this potential, we studied effects of honey bee chronological age and of social role on sensory sensitivity and associative olfactory learning performance. Our results show a decline in olfactory acquisition performance that is linked to social role, but not to chronological age. This decline occurs only in foragers with long foraging duration, but at the same time the foragers show less generalization of odors, which is indicative of more precise learning. Foragers that are reversed from foraging to nest tasks, furthermore, do not show deficits in olfactory acquisition. These results point to complex effects of aging on associative learning in honey bees. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.