Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
5.7 Motor Activity
Newly emerged high-strain bees are more active than low-strain bees.
h is can be seen in their walking activity soon at er they emerge as
adults. Merideth Humphries, a former graduate student of mine, took
newly emerged adult high- and low-strain bees and placed them in a
small arena made from a plastic petri dish. h e arena l oor was a piece
of i lter paper with a grid of squares drawn on it. Bees were placed in
the arena and were observed for 2 minutes while they walked. h e
number of grid squares crossed by each bee was recorded as an indica-
tor of its locomotor activity.
Humphries also looked at wild-type bees. At er testing their locomo-
tor activity, they were assayed for their responsiveness to sucrose, using
the PER technique (Figure 2.7). Wild-type bees that were more active
also were more responsive to sucrose. h is signii cant correlation
showed that the dif erences we observed between high- and low-strain
bees (the coupling of locomotor activity and sucrose sensitivity) is
characteristic of bees in general.
5.8 Neurobiochemistry
Behavior can be studied at many levels. One can sit in a blind and ob-
serve the behavior of animals, or one can look at the chemical changes
occurring in individual cells of the brain associated with behavior as
they interact. In one sense, the observational studies are like looking
at an ocean beach at 10,000 meters elevation and seeing the shape of
the beach, the whitecaps of the waves, and the contour of the clif s, but
not the grains of sand. On the other hand, studying behavioral neuro-
biochemistry is like studying the grains of sand one by one with a mi-
croscope and trying to understand what the beach looks like. When
one considers the immense complexity of even the honey bee brain
with its 900,000 neurons, one realizes how far we are from under-
standing behavior at this level. As a consequence, much of what we
think we know today is certainly incomplete and probably wrong. But
the hope is that as we generate more details about the operation of
