Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Habituation
- Creators: Smith, Brian
Description
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies have experienced substantial losses due to colony collapse disorder (CCD) since the first officially reported cases in 2006. Many factors have been implicated in CCD, including pests, pathogens, malnutrition, and pesticide use, but no correlation has been found between a single factor and the occurrence of CCD. Fungicides have received less research attention compared to insecticides, despite the fact that fungicide application coincides with bloom and the presence of bees. Pristine fungicide is widely used in agriculture and is commonly found as a residue in hives. Several studies have concluded that Pristine can be used without harming bees, but reports of brood loss following Pristine application continue to surface across the country. The primary objectives of this study were to determine whether Pristine causes an aversive gustatory response in bees and whether consumption of an acute dose affects responsiveness to sucrose. An awareness of how foragers interact with contaminated food is useful to understand the likelihood that Pristine is ingested and how that may affect bees' ability to evaluate floral resources. Our results indicated that Pristine has no significant effect on gustatory response or sucrose responsiveness. There was no significant difference between bee responses to Pristine contaminated sucrose and sucrose alone, and no significant effect of Pristine on sucrose responsiveness. These results indicate that honey bees do not have a gustatory aversion to Pristine. A lack of aversion means that honey bees will continue collecting contaminated resources and dispersing them throughout the colony where it can affect brood and clean food stores.
ContributorsMcHugh, Cora Elizabeth (Co-author) / Jernigan, Christopher (Co-author, Committee member) / Burden, Christina (Co-author) / DeGrandi-Hoffman, Gloria (Co-author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / Fewell, Jennifer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The mammalian olfactory system is commonly studied by using the mouse as a model system. Odor habituation is used to investigate odor perception and learning processes. Most previous experimental preparations have been tedious, requiring a researcher to manually change odorants, record investigation time and duration at each odorant, or physical alteration on the mice to enable video tracking. These limitations were overcame by creating an odorized hole-board to allow for systematic and automatic recording of olfactory behavior in mice. A cohort of five male mice were utilized in these experiments and the responses to the odor of strawberries, a diet staple of wile mice, were examined. Experiment 1 showed that free-feeding mice exhibit a preference to locations with strawberry (over control locations), even when these locations can only be identified using olfaction. This preference habituates within a trial but not across days. Experiment 2 showed that strawberry odor without reward causes habituation or extinction to the odor both within trials and across days. From these experiments, it can be concluded that mice innately explore strawberry odor and this can be exploited to the study odor habituation using an odorized hole-board.
ContributorsMa, Jason (Author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / Gerkin, Richard (Committee member) / Oddo, Salvatore (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Mammalian olfaction relies on active sniffing, which both shapes and is shaped by olfactory stimuli. Habituation to repeated exposure of an olfactory stimuli is believed to be mediated by decreased sniffing; however, this decrease may be reserved by exposure to novel odorants. Because of this, it may be possible to use sniffing itself as a measure of novelty, and thus as a measure of odorant similarity. Thus, I investigated the use of sniffing to measure habituation, cross-habituation, and odorant similarity. During habituation experiments, increases in sniff rate seen in response to odorant presentation decreased in magnitude between the first and second presentations, suggesting of habituation. Some of this reduction in sniff rate increases was revered by the presentation of a novel odorant in cross-habituations. However the effect sizes in cross-habituation experiments were low, and the variability high, forestalling the conclusion that sniffing accurately measured cross-habituation. I discuss improvements to the experimental protocol that may allow for cross-habituation to be more accurately measured using sniffing alone in future experiments.
ContributorsVigayavel, Nirmal (Author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / Sanabria, Federico (Committee member) / Gerkin, Rick (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12