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Time-restricted foraging under natural light/dark condition shifts the molecular clock in the honey bee, Apis mellifera

View ORCID ProfileRikesh Jain, View ORCID ProfileAxel Brockmann
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/242289
Rikesh Jain
1National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore-560056, Karnataka, India
2SASTRA University, Thirumalaisamudram, Thanjavur-613401, Tamil Nadu, India.
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Axel Brockmann
1National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore-560056, Karnataka, India
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Abstract

Honey bees have a remarkable sense of time and individual honey bee foragers are capable to adjust their foraging activity with respect to the time of food availability. Although, there is plenty of experimental evidence that foraging behavior is guided by the circadian clock, nothing is known about the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms. Here we present a first study exploring whether the time-restricted foraging under natural light-dark condition affects the molecular clock in honey bees. In an enclosed flight chamber (12m × 4m × 4m), food was presented either for 2 hours in the morning or 2 hours in the afternoon for several consecutive days and daily cycling of the two major clock genes, cryptochrome2 (cry2) and period (per), were analyzed in three different tissues involved in feeding-related behaviors: brain, antennae and subesophageal ganglion (SEG). We found that morning and afternoon trained foragers showed significant phase-differences in the cycling of both clock genes in all three tissues. Furthermore, the phase-differences were more pronounced when the feeder was scented with the general plant odor linalool. Our results clearly demonstrate that foraging time functions as a strong circadian Zeitgeber in honey bees. More surprisingly our results suggest that foraging time might have the potential to override the entrainment effect of the light-dark cycle.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted January 03, 2018.
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Time-restricted foraging under natural light/dark condition shifts the molecular clock in the honey bee, Apis mellifera
Rikesh Jain, Axel Brockmann
bioRxiv 242289; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/242289
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Time-restricted foraging under natural light/dark condition shifts the molecular clock in the honey bee, Apis mellifera
Rikesh Jain, Axel Brockmann
bioRxiv 242289; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/242289

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