Dissertation Research: The Development of Spatial Memory in Honeybees

9423576非技术总结许多动物，从昆虫到人类，都面临着利用景观的特征来寻找觅食或筑巢的地方的问题，而空间定位已经被几代生物学家和心理学家深入研究。长期以来，蜜蜂一直是研究环境的视觉特征如何用于定位的重要模式生物。工蜂在一个巨大的空间里活动，在距离巢穴10公里的地方寻找食物，利用地标和天文线索找到自己的路。此外，它们是用非常小的大脑做到这一点的。因此，他们提出了一个在某种程度上对所有动物都会出现的问题的极端版本：鉴于神经系统存储和处理信息的能力是有限的，大脑如何被设计为在复杂的环境中产生适当的行为？以前关于蜜蜂如何利用地貌特征进行定位的研究集中于蜜蜂了解的地貌特征的具体情况。在这个项目中，补充的问题是蜜蜂的空间记忆是如何发展的。这项研究将考察蜜蜂在新环境中进行的第一次短时间(不到10分钟)定向飞行所学到的东西。通过研究在第一次定向飞行后从蜂箱中转移出来的蜜蜂的归巢能力，这些实验将解决以下问题：蜜蜂对巢穴周围风景的了解有多广泛和统一，需要学习的风景是否会影响蜜蜂对风景的探索程度，以及太阳在定向飞行中学习地标的作用。这项工作应该为研究蜜蜂和其他昆虫的空间学习神经机制铺平道路。此外，由于其他动物面临的导航问题与蜜蜂面临的问题类似，这些研究可能有助于发展关于空间记忆如何产生的一般理论。

Dyer, Fred IBN-9423576 Non Technical Summary Many animals, ranging from insects to human beings, face the problem of using features of a landscape to find places to feed or nest, and spatial orientation has been studied intensively by generations of biologists and psychologists. Honey bees have long been an important model organism for studies of how visual features of the environment can be used for orientation. Worker bees move over an enormous space, traveling up to 10 km from the nest in search of food, using landmarks and celestial cues to find their way. Furthermore, they do this with a very small brain. Thus they present an extreme version of a problem that arises on some level for all animals: given that there are limits to the capacity of a nervous system to store and process information,, how can the brain be designed to produce appropriate behavior in a complex environment? Previous work on how bees use features of the landscape for orientation has focused of the specific features of the landscape that bees learn about. In this project, the complementary issue of how the bees' spatial memory develops is addressed. The research will examine what bees learn as a consequence of their first short (less than 10 minutes) orientation flight in a new landscape. By studying the homing ability of bees that have been displaced from the hive following their first orientation flights, the experiments will address questions about how widely and uniformly bees learn about a landscape around the nest, whether the landscape to be learned influences the extent of the bees' exploration of the landscape, and what role the sun plays in learning landmarks during the orientation flight. This work should pave the way for studies of the neural mechanisms of spatial learning in bees and other insects. Also, to the extent that other animals face navigational problems parallel to those faced by honey bees, these studies may contribute to the d evelopment of general theories about how spatial memory is generated.