The effect of octopamine on behavioral responses of free-foraging bumblebees to a change in food source profitability

The invertebrate neuromodulator octopamine is known to be involved in bees' associative learning, enhancing the responsiveness of a bee to a conditioned stimulus. In this study, we tested the effect of octopamine on the choice behavior of free-flying bumblebees using a two-phase experiment in an array of artificial flowers. During the first phase of the experiment, the bee was allowed to collect octopamine-laden sugar water from two types of equally rewarding flowers (yellow versus blue). In the second phase, one type of flower was set to be unrewarding. The behavior of the bee (proportion of visits to the unrewarding flowers) over the two phases was fitted to a sigmoid regression model. Our results show that octopamine had no significant effect on the bees' equilibrium choice or on the overall rate of the behavioral change in response to the change in reward. Rather, octopamine significantly affected the time interval between the change in reward status and the initiation of behavioral change in the bee.     

Climate change and temperature-dependent biogeography: oxygen limitation of thermal tolerance in animals

Recent years have shown a rise in mean global temperatures and a shift in the geographical distribution of ectothermic animals. For a cause and effect analysis the present paper discusses those physiological processes limiting thermal tolerance. The lower heat tolerance in metazoa compared with unicellular eukaryotes and bacteria suggests that a complex systemic rather than molecular process is limiting in metazoa. Whole-animal aerobic scope appears as the first process limited at low and high temperatures, linked to the progressively insufficient capacity of circulation and ventilation. Oxygen levels in body fluids may decrease, reflecting excessive oxygen demand at high temperatures or insufficient aerobic capacity of mitochondria at low temperatures. Aerobic scope falls at temperatures beyond the thermal optimum and vanishes at low or high critical temperatures when transition to an anaerobic mitochondrial metabolism occurs. The adjustment of mitochondrial densities on top of parallel molecular or membrane adjustments appears crucial for maintaining aerobic scope and for shifting thermal tolerance. In conclusion, the capacity of oxygen delivery matches full aerobic scope only within the thermal optimum. At temperatures outside this range, only time-limited survival is supported by residual aerobic scope, then anaerobic metabolism and finally molecular protection by heat shock proteins and antioxidative defence. In a cause and effect hierarchy, the progressive increase in oxygen limitation at extreme temperatures may even enhance oxidative and denaturation stress. As a corollary, capacity limitations at a complex level of organisation, the oxygen delivery system, define thermal tolerance limits before molecular functions become disturbed.     

A new type of infrared organ in the Australian "fire-beetle" Merimna atrata (Coleoptera: Buprestidae)

 The Australian buprestid beetle Merimna atrata (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) approaches forest fires because its larvae develop in freshly burnt wood. So far nothing is known about possible sensory systems enabling the beetles to detect fires and to cope with the thermal environment close to the flames. We found that M. atrata has two pairs of infrared (IR) organs on the ventrolateral sides of the abdomen. Each IR organ consists of a specialized IR-absorbing area which is innervated by one thermosensitive multipolar neuron. The primary dendritic branches ramify into more than 800 closely packed terminal endings which contain a large number of mitochondria. We called the special morphology of the dendritic region a terminal dendritic mass. The type of IR receptor found in M. atrata is unique in insects and can best be compared with the IR organs of boid snakes. Received: 14 August 2000 / Accepted in revised form: 18 October 2000