Characterization of the olfactory system of the giant honey bee, Apis dorsata

AbstractApis dorsata is an open-nesting, undomesticated, giant honey bee found in southern Asia. We characterized a number of aspects of olfactory system ofApis dorsata and compared it with the well-characterized, western honeybee,Apis mellifera, a domesticated, cavity-nesting species.A. dorsata differs fromA. mellifera in nesting behavior, foraging activity, and defense mechanisms. Hence, there can be different demands on its olfactory system. We elucidated the glomerular organization ofA. dorsata by creating a digital atlas for the antennal lobe and visualized the antennal lobe tracts and localized their innervations. We showed that the neurites of Kenyon cells with cell bodies located in a neighborhood in calyx retain their relative neighborhoods in the pedunculus and the vertical lobe forming a columnar organization in the mushroom body. The vertical lobe and the calyx of the mushroom body were found to be innervated by extrinsic neurons with cell bodies in the lateral protocerebrum. We found that the species was amenable to olfactory conditioning and showed good learning and memory retention at 24  h after training. It was also amenable to massed and spaced conditioning and could distinguish trained odor from an untrained novel odor. We found that all the above mentioned features inA. dorsata are very similar to those inA. mellifera. We thereby establishA. dorsata as a good model system, strikingly similar toA. mellifera despite the differences in their nesting and for...
Source: Cell and Tissue Research - Category: Cytology Source Type: research