US-Turkey Workshop: EurBee 2010: Convening the first international symposium-workshop on honey bee behavioral plasticity-an integrative approach, Ankara, September 2010

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK

Investigators

Abstract

1043057 Abramson, Oklahoma State University Summary of Proposal: The project for support of a U.S.-Turkey workshop: EuroBee 2010: International Symposium-workshop on Honey Bee Behavioral Plasticity-an Integrative Approach, Ankara, Turkey, September 2010. The organizers are Dr. Charles Abramson of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma and Dr. Aykut Kence, Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. The meeting is to promote the creation of an international network of scientists involved in honey bee research. This will be the first international meeting to focus specifically on integrative study from the level of the nervous system to that of the ecosystem, and only the second international meeting on learning and memory of honey bees since the 1980s. The placement of the workshop at the end of the IVth Biennial European Honey Bee Conference at Ankara, Turkey September 7-9, 2010 will help minimize travel expenses and take advantage of the workshop to draw greater, particularly local participation, especially those interested in diversity in honey bee behavior. Turkey is a center of honey bee subspecific diversity (20% of world subspecies), and the workshop will include visits to sites where four of the five subspecies of honeybees in Turkey can be observed. In addition to the NSF support, several international participants have been able to secure partial or complete support for their attendance at the workshop. Intellectual merit: This meeting will emphasize integration of approaches from neurobiology, development, ecology, and evolution, as well as different behavioral research traditions. There seem to be few examples of this integration due to lack of communication among researchers with various approaches, especially those in different countries. The proposed workshop will help to advance our understanding of (1) how animals with small brains are able to achieve a high level of cognitive sophistication, specifically complex learning and memory abilities and (2) how behavioral variation within and between different species of honey bees, an important model organism, is related to their evolutionary history and ecological adaptations. The PI is an expert in the field of honey bee learning and memory and has extensive experience with foreign collaborations. The meeting will foster collaborative research between scientists from the U.S., Europe and Turkey. The proposed topic for the research is very creative, interdisciplinary and will have a major impact upon the study of honey bees. The logistics of the meeting in Turkey have been well planned. Broader impacts: The meeting will significantly enhance the study of honey bee biology, by focusing on an integrative approach to behavioral plasticity through physiological, ecological, and cellular mechanisms. The results will include the creation of an international network of scientists who are studying behavioral plasticity in a model system that features an animal, the honey bee, which has major significance to human life. The meeting will include the participation of graduate students, women, and others who are members of underrepresented groups. The results will be broadly disseminated through the publication of the proceedings in an edited volume and the preparation of a concept paper for Nature or Science. Both the PI and co-PI have a good record of publication in international, peer-reviewed journals, including the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.