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The current study provides evidence of learned helplessness in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.). Bees received either avoidable or unavoidable shock during a discriminative compartment restriction task in an automated shuttle box. Decreased avoidance behavior was observed when bees received unavoidable shock prior to avoidable shock tests, conserving a non-preference response pattern. Prior training with avoidable shock created a preference that was conserved when shock was later unavoidable. Length of the training time impacted how pronounced the conserved behavior was in subsequent tests. Unlike existing learned helplessness studies in other animals, no decrease in general activity was observed. These findings identify honey bees as a unique model organism to explore the process of learned helplessness.v

The honey bees' lack of learned avoidance to EtOH mirrors that seen in human alcoholism. These findings demonstrate the usefulness of honey bees as an insect model for EtOH consumption.

No abstract

Interval timing is a key element of foraging theory, models of predator avoidance, and competitive interactions. Although interval timing is well documented in vertebrate species, it is virtually unstudied in invertebrates. In the present experiment, we used free-flying honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) as a model for timing behaviors. Subjects were trained to enter a hole in an automated artificial flower to receive a nectar reinforcer (i.e. reward). Responses were continuously reinforced prior to exposure to either a fixed interval (FI) 15-sec, FI 30-sec, FI 60-sec, or FI 120-sec reinforcement schedule. We measured response rate and post-reinforcement pause within each fixed interval trial between reinforcers. Honey bees responded at higher frequencies earlier in the fixed interval suggesting subject responding did not come under traditional forms of temporal control. Response rates were lower during FI conditions compared to performance on continuous reinforcement schedules, and responding was more resistant to extinction when previously reinforced on FI schedules. However, no “scalloped” or “break-and-run” patterns of group or individual responses reinforced on FI schedules were observed; no traditional evidence of temporal control was found. Finally, longer FI schedules eventually caused all subjects to cease returning to the operant chamber indicating subjects did not tolerate the longer FI schedules.