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Diminishing returns: the influence of experience and environment on time-memory extinction in honey bee foragers

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Abstract

Classical experiments demonstrated that honey bee foragers trained to collect food at virtually any time of day will return to that food source on subsequent days with a remarkable degree of temporal accuracy. This versatile time-memory, based on an endogenous circadian clock, presumably enables foragers to schedule their reconnaissance flights to best take advantage of the daily rhythms of nectar and pollen availability in different species of flowers. It is commonly believed that the time-memory rapidly extinguishes if not reinforced daily, thus enabling foragers to switch quickly from relatively poor sources to more productive ones. On the other hand, it is also commonly thought that extinction of the time-memory is slow enough to permit foragers to ‘remember’ the food source over a day or two of bad weather. What exactly is the time-course of time-memory extinction? In a series of field experiments, we determined that the level of food-anticipatory activity (FAA) directed at a food source is not rapidly extinguished and, furthermore, the time-course of extinction is dependent upon the amount of experience accumulated by the forager at that source. We also found that FAA is prolonged in response to inclement weather, indicating that time-memory extinction is not a simple decay function but is responsive to environmental changes. These results provide insights into the adaptability of FAA under natural conditions.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Trevor England, Neha Barakam, Brad Barker, Arianna Bruno, Stefani Coleman, Christopher Cronan, Patrick Doherty, Erica Edmund, Alison Gagan, Forrest Harrison, Jenny Hoekstra, Jonathan Humberd, Nathan Humphrey, Jennifer Johnson, Tannille King, Guy Kramer, Adam Lewis, Christopher Litchfield, T.J. Metcalf, Jaime McManus, Charles Miller, Samara Miller, Somer Miller, Mary Ann Moore, Matt Otto, Caleb Paquette, Lia Pun-Chuen, Ryan Rice, Lindsay Slemp, Will Smith, Kim Stroup, Jack Whitaker, Jeremey Whitaker, Anthony Whitted, Ashley Williams, and Dmitri Yampolsky for help with the field experiments. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions that strengthened the manuscript. This work was supported by funds from the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, Grant No. 2006-35302-17278 (D.M.) and the Department of Biological Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Denise I. Pav Research Award (B.V.N.). The present study complies with the current laws of the country in which the experiments were performed, including the ‘Principles of Animal Care’, Publication No. 86-23, revised 1985 of the National Institutes of Health.

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Correspondence to Darrell Moore.

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Moore, D., Van Nest, B.N. & Seier, E. Diminishing returns: the influence of experience and environment on time-memory extinction in honey bee foragers. J Comp Physiol A 197, 641–651 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-011-0624-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-011-0624-y

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