REU: Honey Bee Neurobiology and Behavior Program

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9322202 Fahrbach This award provides support to the University of Illinois to continue a successful REU program. Summer research programs will be focused on the behavior and neuroanatomy of honey bees. Students will have the opportunity to combine compelling fieldwork with modern neuroanatomical techniques. Student training will be a three-fold process. First, lectures will be given on the structure and function of the insect nervous system; the hormonal regulation of insect metamorphosis and neural development; and the experimental study of animal behavior. Second, students will receive practical training in the safe handling of colonies of honey bees and in observation of honey bee behavior, with ample opportunity provided to practice these new skills. Third, students will receive laboratory instruction in histological techniques for the light microscopic study of the honey bee nervous system, including many aspects of stereology. Students will then be divided into two teams of three students each. These teams will then carry out a research project in which an aspect of brain organization, nerve cell number, gene expression, or hormonal responsiveness, etc. is studied in bees of known age and behavioral status. The goal of this project is to introduce students who already have an interest in behavioral biology to the value of social insects as models for the study of the neurobiology of complex behavior, including learning and memory. This project represents an extension of an ongoing collaboration between two laboratories in the Department of Entomology and the Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will be based in the University of Illinois Bee Research Facility and in the co-PIs laboratories in the Department of Entomology. This unusual combination of field and laboratory research environments coupled with the different but complementary backgrounds of the co-PIs will provide undergraduates with a rich summer research experience. The program currently proposed reflects the success of a past REU Site program centered around the same theme (offered Summer 1992), with a new emphasis on research teamwork as a means of helping students complete meaningful research projects. ***