Increased Neural Activity of a Mushroom Body Neuron Subtype in the Brains of Forager Honeybees

Abstract

Honeybees organize a sophisticated society, and the workers transmit information about the location of food sources using a symbolic dance, known as ‘dance communication’. Recent studies indicate that workers integrate sensory information during foraging flight for dance communication. The neural mechanisms that account for this remarkable ability are, however, unknown. In the present study, we established a novel method to visualize neural activity in the honeybee brain using a novel immediate early gene, kakusei, as a marker of neural activity. The kakusei transcript was localized in the nuclei of brain neurons and did not encode an open reading frame, suggesting that it functions as a non-coding nuclear RNA. Using this method, we show that neural activity of a mushroom body neuron subtype, the small-type Kenyon cells, is prominently increased in the brains of dancer and forager honeybees. In contrast, the neural activity of the two mushroom body neuron subtypes, the small-and large-type Kenyon cells, is increased in the brains of re-orienting workers, which memorize their hive location during re-orienting flights. These findings demonstrate that the small-type Kenyon cell-preferential activity is associated with foraging behavior, suggesting its involvement in information integration during foraging flight, which is an essential basis for dance communication.

Precocious Locomotor Behavior Begins in the Egg: Development of Leg Muscle Patterns for Stepping in the Chick

“…Results from GO analyses highlight the function of the mushroom bodies in learning and memory, with enrichment in categories such as transcriptional regulation and ion channel activity, among others. These results are consistent with known roles for the mushroom bodies in the regulation of rhythmic behavior, learning and memory [28,29,33,56,57]. In addition, our results nicely correspond with earlier in situ hybridization data and immuno-staining data for genes like Inositol tris-phosphate receptor, CAMKII and PKA that were also shown to be highly expressed in mushroom bodies [48,50,54].…”

Activity-dependent gene expression in honey bee mushroom bodies in response to orientation flight

“…In honey bees, mushroom body neuropil undergoes age-related expansion roughly coincident with orientation flights in both workers and reproductives (Fahrbach et al, 1995;Brandon and Coss, 1982;Withers et al, 1993;Fahrbach et al, 1997), and as mentioned above, one study found rapid remodeling of dendritic spines in the mushroom bodies after an orientation flight (Brandon and Coss, 1982). In addition, Kiya et al (Kiya et al, 2007) found evidence of neuronal activation in the mushroom bodies of reorienting foragers. Drosophila have minimal mushroom bodies that receive olfactory input almost exclusively (Heisenberg, 2003), while those of honey bees comprise a substantial portion of total brain volume and receive significant visual and olfactory input.…”

Production of Knockout Mutants by CRISPR/Cas9 in the European Honeybee, Apis mellifera L.

“…One such species is the European honeybee Apis mellifera L. In addition to being an important pollinator in agriculture, the honeybee is a model animal for studies of the molecular and neural bases underlying social behaviors (Kamikouchi et al, 1998;Rybak et al, 1998;Menzel and Giurfa, 2001;Takeuchi et al, 2001Takeuchi et al, , 2002Kucharski et al, 2002;Kiya et al, 2007;Sen Sarma et al, 2009;Kaneko et al, 2013). The honeybee is a social insect and colony members exhibit various complex social behaviors.…”