Dynamics of biogenic amines in the brain of bee

• Main Authors: Yi-Ling Chen, 陳怡伶
• Other Authors: En-Cheng Yang, Ph. D.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16096910115886975320

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 昆蟲學系 === 92 === When animals incur stress conditions and were threatened, the different chemical composition, including gene express, proteins, peptides and biogenic amines, would regulate physiology states and behavior response. In insects, when they fly in a long distance or were threatened, the stress hormone, octopamine, was released to regulate the concentration of blood sugar (trehalose) to supply large energy demand. Because of less understanding the relationship between the biogenic amine and stress stimulus in insect central nervous system (CNS), three different stress treatments (CO2 anesthesia, chilling anesthesia and the vertical spin) were applied to test whether the honeybee workers express the stress responses in foraging behaviors. The results show that time intervals of foraging behaviors of workers show a longer latency under stress. Therefore, it is speculated that the stress treatments likely affect the worker foraging behavior in honeybee. Besides, the biogenic amines levels in the workers’ brains were measured to examine the rapid biochemical response in the brain to the stressors. After chilling anesthesia, the dopamine (DA) and octopamine (OA) levels significantly decreased; in the CO2 anesthesia for 2 min and 4 min treatments, only DA showed significant decrease. In non-anesthesia treatments, the vertical spin with the velocity of 50 and 60 rpm for 90 s, the DA and OA levels significantly decreased. These results infer that when the bees were under stress, the brain levels of OA and DA were depressed and this might cause the longer latency in the rewarding behaviors. But, the serotonin (5-HT) levels under these stress treatments did not change significantly in the bee brains.