Caffeine Improves Memory In Bees 41
sciencehabit writes "After a long day buzzing between flowers, even the most industrious worker bee could use a little help remembering which ones she wants to return to the next day. Some plants have a trick to ensure they end up at the top of the list: caffeinated nectar. A team of researchers bombarded honey bees with floral smells paired with sugary rewards, some of which contained the same levels of caffeine found in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers. Three times as many bees remembered the odors associated with caffeine after 24 hours, when compared with the scents associated with sugar alone (abstract). When the researchers applied the stimulant directly to honey bee brains, it had a positive effect on the neurons associated with the formation of long term memories. Now, they want to see if bees go out of their way to feed on caffeinated nectar, perhaps even ignoring predators to do so—behavior that, if observed, could shed light on the neurological processes behind addiction."
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Really? Because the only reason I remember where I left my mug is because I always leave it in the same spot; if I leave it elsewhere, I end up looking all over the place to see where it's gone to. So I tend to forget where my source of caffeine is. I've been known to occasionally take a clean mug at work because I forgot there was one on my desk already.
Then again, except for the queen which can live up to 5 years, drones and worker bees live significantly less than a year (4 months max.), all of which is
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Damn it, I'm overanalyzing this, aren't I?
Too much coffee?
I don't think it's age. I've not been able to remember where I set my mug since I started drinking coffee. I've been losing my glasses since before I drank coffee. They're just details that don't seem important when they happen.
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Damn it, I'm overanalyzing this, aren't I?
Too much coffee?
Absolutely! :D
I don't think it's age. I've not been able to remember where I set my mug since I started drinking coffee. I've been losing my glasses since before I drank coffee. They're just details that don't seem important when they happen.
True, at work I usually have more pressing matters to worry about than keeping track of some generic office mug...
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Other studies have already shown that coffee has no effect on human memory unless you are exhausted, in which case it helps. As any stimulant might.
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The Internet is very adamant that bees are the good guys [wordpress.com], actually.
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They just want to get Americanized and just hang out.
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Is that they're bees. Tiny, flying murder machines.
Bees know nothing about how flying murder machines [youtube.com] work, except by harsh experience.
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Perhaps they only became tiny, flying murder machines after being overcaffeinated ...
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Worker Bees (Score:5, Funny)
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But does this increase bee's productivity? Can we improve that productivity with 6-sigma? Let's have discussion during the break-out.
Listen kid, unless you want to give all your future status updates entirely by getting up on the conference room table and waggling your ass frantically [youtube.com], you'll stop that analogy right now...
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Stop it? Why would I want to stop it?
Ah, but why, doctor? (Score:4, Interesting)
Half-baked hypothesis time.
Caffeine is actually toxic to many arthropods, and may actually be a defence mechanism for plants. I propose that by being immune to it, bees could potentially make their honey less attractive to other insects; similarly, by putting it in their nectar, plants are defended against unwanted non-pollinators. The plant's mechanism would have evolved first, then grown exaggerated when bees made those variants more successful.
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Caffeine is actually toxic to many arthropods, and may actually be a defence mechanism for plants.
The article I read on this says exactly that. So the plants put out just enough to attract the pollinators.
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Ah, don't believe me, eh? [newscientist.com]
Small amounts of caffeine and other chemicals such as nicotine are present in the nectar of more than 100 plant species. Plants use these often nasty-tasting chemicals to deter predators, but Wright's work suggests that they also use them to keep pollinators loyal to their flowers. It's a matter of getting the dose right; leak just the right amount into their nectar to lure in the bees, but not too much so that the bitter taste puts them off.
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JAVA-H, the new online journal with all that buzz! (Score:3)
:>)
JAVA-H, the new online journal with all that buzz!
.
Alright, stick an extra "A" in that journal title and I'll be itchin' to get published in JAVA-H:
- American? - too geographically limited? - J of American Validated Armchair Hypotheses
- Anthropomorphic? - relating all research to human endeavors? birds do it, bees do it, even educated humans do it...
- Axiomatically? - ooh, this one sounds even more scientific and even a bit
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Got to get their buzz somehow. (Score:2)
Caffeine is addictive (Score:1)
Or, they just like it. (Score:2)
That's how I like my coffee (Score:3)
Covered in bees!
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Caffeinistas (Score:1)
The first one's free!
The real cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (Score:2)
Bees are very different from us (Score:2)
A relative of caffeine that is in chocolate that is so powerful to dogs that chocolate can kill dogs or at least make them very sick. Bees are invertebrates. Compared to bees dogs are just like us. So its pretty hard to correlate any effect of caffeine on bees to an effect on humans.
Evolution (Score:2)
Bacon (Score:2)