Nadler, Lauren (2020) Making a bee-line for food with octopamine. Journal of Experimental Biology, 223 (17), [214510]. (doi:10.1242/jeb.214510).
Abstract
How do you find the newest, trendiest restaurants with the best food in your neighborhood (that is, of course, during non-pandemic times when restaurants are all open)? Well, one way that you may notice the new hip spot is to follow the crowds. If you wander by a spot filled with folks enjoying mouth-wateringly delicious food, you will likely be drawn to visit that restaurant yourself. But, how does your brain process these signals about food resources and quality? Tianfei Peng and two of his colleagues from the University of Mainz in Germany dug into this question by looking at the inner-workings of a slightly simpler brain – that of the stingless bee – to uncover the brain's role in social animal foraging.
The trio suspected that the compound octopamine could play a role in how both individuals and social groups find food and perceive its value. Octopamine is a major player in the brain function of invertebrate animals, including many insects, equivalent to the fight-or-flight hormone noradrenaline in vertebrates, including humans
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