Many animals, including honey bees, memorize the time course of the sun's movements for use in their orientation, and there is much to learn about how they do this. According to the principal investigator's recent results, honey bees seem to memorize the sun's course only once early in life; they do not re-learn the sun's course relative to a new landscape if they are passively displaced from their natal site to another, similar site. In this project, the research will determine whether or not bees can ever re-learn the sun's movements and, if so, under what particular, biologically relevant circumstances. In addition, further experiments with displaced bees will explore the cognitive structures underlying the bees' learning of the sun's course, showing, for example, whether the bees' memory of the sun's course is inextricably linked to their memory of the landscape, or whether the two memories are separable.
Honey bees have been important model organisms in behavioral biology. This species is well understood with respect to sensory biology and their mechanisms of communication, orientation, and learning. The results of this project will therefore deepen our understanding of how complex external relationships are acquired and encoded by small brains in general.
