UC San Diego

Positive and negative experiences can alter animal brain dopamine levels.¹ When first arriving at a rewarding food source or beginning to waggle dance and recruit nestmates to food, honeybees have increased brain dopamine levels, indicating a desire for food.² We provide the first evidence that an inhibitory signal, the stop signal, which counters waggle dancing and is triggered by negative events at the food source, can decrease head dopamine levels and dancing, independent of the dancer having any negative experiences. The hedonic value of food can therefore be depressed simply by the receipt of an inhibitory signal. Increasing the brain dopamine levels reduced the aversive effects of an attack, increasing the time that bees spent subsequently feeding and waggle dancing and decreasing their stop signaling and time spent in the hive. Because honeybees regulate food recruitment and its inhibition at the colony level, these results highlight the complex integration of colony information with a basic and highly conserved neural mechanism in mammals and insects.² VIDEO ABSTRACT.