A challenging problem in behavioral biology is to unravel the influences of genes and the environment on the development of behavior, particularly behavior that is characterized by a high degree of plasticity. Plasticity in the behavioral development of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, offers unique opportunities; its expression in an insect invites rigorous experimentation while its complexity makes it a relevant model. The bee will thus be used to develop a new model system to study this problem. It has been demonstrated recently that plasticity in the behavioral ontogeny of the bee is a consequence of modulation of juvenile hormone titers by extrinsinc factors, and stimuli that can affect juvenile hormone titers and behavioral development do elicit variable responses in genetically distinct individuals. These discoveries, coupled with the results of a theoretical analysis of bee behavior, suggest the following four lines of inquiry: (1) a test of the hypothesis that there are juvenile hormone-binding cells in regions of the bee brain devoted to olfaction, which is a critical prediction of the more fundamental hypothesis perception; (2) an analysis of the role of neuromodulators in regulating the development of behavioral plasticity, by testing the hypothesis that juvenile hormone (JH) affects CNS behavioral response thresholds via its effects on brain titers of biogenic amines; (3) an analysis of how the bee obtains and responds to information on changing conditions in the colony, based on the hypothesis that perception of specific environmental and social stimuli influences plasticity in behavioral development via effects on juvenile hormone blood titers and biosynthesis; (4) examination of whether genetic differences in the plasticity of endocrine-mediated behavioral development are a consequence of differences in information-processing or differences in rates of behavioral development.
