NiCE: Investigating nervous system integration of daylength and temperature mismatches in a model for resilience, the honey bee

About This Grant

Ecosystem change can cause animals to become out of sync with other species that provide critical resources like food or nesting habitat. This loss of synchronization results from mismatches in cues that indicate time of day or year. For example, many animals use daylength and temperature to coordinate their behaviors with their environment. Sometimes, these two factors no longer line up; for example, temperatures are changing while daylength is staying the same. The goal of the current study, which is co-funded by the National Science Foundation and the Kavli Foundation, is to determine how daylength and temperature cues are integrated in the nervous system to impact behavior in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), a species responsible for ~$15 billion in crop pollination across the U.S.A. annually. Honey bee pollination success, critical to food security, requires foraging worker bees to synchronize their activity with floral resource blooms. This study implements innovative behavioral tracking, molecular and imaging methods, and functional studies of the nervous system to determine how current and projected daylength and temperature combinations impact honey bee behavioral rhythms. The honey bee thrives in diverse environments, making it an ideal species to identify features of the nervous system that confer resilience to ecosystem change. Project goals include providing high school students opportunities to learn about beekeeping, environmental science, and STEM careers. Cue mismatches resulting from dynamic environmental conditions can cause maladaptive behavioral timing. Temperature profiles are shifting while daylengths remain the same, causing a mismatch between the two main abiotic cues animals use in combination to synchronize their behaviors with their environment. The impact of such mismatches depends on how cues are prioritized and integrated in the nervous system. Honey bee foraging activity is entrained to, and acutely impacted by, both daylength and temperature conditions. However, no study has investigated how these cues are integrated in the nervous system. Investigators will assess how daily temperature cycles influence rhythmic neuromolecular processes related to light and temperature perception and integration. Using experiments that mirror natural conditions, they will use quantitative PCR (qPCR) in light- and temperature-sensing tissues and bulk RNAseq in the rest of the brain over a 24 h cycle to determine how variation in temperature impacts daylength-entrained molecular rhythms (Obj 1). They will use single-nucleus RNAseq and RNAscope to determine the cell populations and brain regions that are most vulnerable to climate-change-relevant mismatches between temperature and daylength (Obj 2). They will use electroretinography to assess how temperature and daylength experience combine with acute temperature conditions to impact visual sensitivity and spatial resolving abilities (Obj 3). Addressing these objectives will identify nervous system components that may be vulnerable or resilient to cue mismatches in a widespread and adaptable model pollinator species. This project is supported jointly by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems in the Directorate for Biological Science of NSF and the Kavli Foundation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.