Zhang S W, Lehrer M, Srinivasan M V
Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 1999 Nov;72(3):180-201. doi: 10.1006/nlme.1998.3901.
Studies of navigation in bees and ants are beginning to reveal that foraging insects traveling repeatedly to a food source navigate by using a series of visual images of the environment acquired en route (Collett, 1996; Collett et al., 1993; Judd & Collett, 1998; Wehner et al., 1990, 1996). By comparing the currently viewed scene with the appropriate stored image, the insect is able to ascertain whether or not it is on the correct path and make any necessary corrections. If a bee happens to forage at more than one site, then she needs not only to memorize a separate set of images for each route that she has learned but also to retrieve the set of images that is appropriate to each route. Here we examine the bee's capacity to learn and later retrieve from memory two different sets of visual stimuli. Bees were trained to fly through a compound Y-maze where they were presented alternately with two different sequences of visual stimuli on their route to a food reward. We find that bees can indeed store two different sequences of images simultaneously. Furthermore, the trained bees are able to classify the memorized images into two groups, one pertaining to each three-stimulus set. Exposure to any of the images pertaining to one set triggers recall of all of the other images associated with that set. Associative grouping and recall of visual stimuli, demonstrated here for the first time in honeybees, provide an effective means of retrieving the appropriate navigational information from memory.
对蜜蜂和蚂蚁导航的研究开始揭示，反复前往食物源的觅食昆虫通过利用沿途获取的一系列环境视觉图像来导航（科利特，1996年；科利特等人，1993年；贾德和科利特，1998年；韦纳等人，1990年、1996年）。通过将当前看到的场景与适当存储的图像进行比较，昆虫能够确定自己是否走在正确的路径上，并做出任何必要的修正。如果一只蜜蜂碰巧在不止一个地点觅食，那么它不仅需要为自己学到的每条路线记忆一组单独的图像，还需要检索适合每条路线的那组图像。在这里，我们研究了蜜蜂学习并随后从记忆中检索两组不同视觉刺激的能力。蜜蜂被训练飞过一个复合Y形迷宫，在它们通往食物奖励的路线上，会交替呈现两组不同的视觉刺激序列。我们发现，蜜蜂确实能够同时存储两组不同的图像序列。此外，经过训练的蜜蜂能够将记忆中的图像分为两组，每组对应三个刺激集。接触与其中一组相关的任何图像都会触发对与该组相关的所有其他图像的回忆。联想分组和视觉刺激的回忆，首次在蜜蜂身上得到证明，为从记忆中检索适当的导航信息提供了一种有效手段。
