Combined role of immediate early genes Egr-1, Hr-38 and Kakusei in the foraging behavior and learning in honeybees

Abstract

The foraging behavior of honeybees is one of the most systematically composed behaviors among social insects which are admirable to watch. The main purpose of honeybee foraging is to collect food for their colony and since ancient days honeybee products have been used for various medicinal purposes (Singh and Takhellambam, 2021) (1). During foraging, honeybees gather information and transmit to their colony members regarding the location, distance, and profitability of forage sites with the help of unique movements called waggle dance. The capacities of honeybees’ time memory enable the foragers to return to a good food source in anticipation of the time of day. This highly intellectual, dynamic, and well-coordinated behavior of honeybees makes them to be one of the best choices of behavioral model to study various aspects of dynamic behaviors. As a result, vast knowledge in honeybee behavior has been accumulated and several recent studies immerge towards finding the underpinning regulatory biology of honeybee foraging behaviors. Immediate early genes (IE) genes are well documented neural markers and their promising roles in honeybee foraging have been demonstrated. Two of our recent studies showed three IE genes Egr-1, Hr-38 and Kakusei involvement during the daily foraging of honeybees. This finding has provided an avenue to further explore and identify the regulatory genes/proteins and neurons that underlie a specific behavior such as learning, memory, communication, and interaction etc. In this study we further analyze our previous published data to examine interaction of the three genes during the daily foraging of honeybees.