Honeybees (Genus Apis) commonly use their stingers to counterattack an intruder. The neural bases of the anti-predator behaviors and how during evolution they were acquired, however, remain unknown. Some animals exhibit characteristic anti-predator behaviors against their natural enemies that are considered to be an evolutionary consequence of adaptation to the threat of natural enemies. In nature, animals threatened by predators exhibit a variety of adaptive behaviors to escape or actively defend themselves against the predators. No additional external funding was received for this study.Д¬ompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ДЇunding: This work was supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas вЂњSystems Molecular EthologyвЂќ from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan. Received: JAccepted: FebruPublished: March 14, 2012Д¬opyright: В© 2012 Ugajin et al. PLoS ONE 7(3):Д®ditor: Wulfila Gronenberg, University of Arizona, United States of America In addition, workers exposed to 46вЊ heat also exhibited Acks expression patterns similar to those observed in the brains of workers involved in the formation of a hot defensive bee ball, suggesting that the neural activity observed in the brains of workers involved in the hot defensive bee ball mainly reflects thermal stimuli processing.Д¬itation: Ugajin A, Kiya T, Kunieda T, Ono M, Yoshida T, Kubo T (2012) Detection of Neural Activity in the Brains of Japanese Honeybee Workers during the Formation of a вЂњHot Defensive Bee BallвЂќ. Using Acks as a neural activity marker, we demonstrated that neural activity in the mushroom bodies, especially in Class II Kenyon cells, one subtype of mushroom body intrinsic neurons, and a restricted area between the dorsal lobes and the optic lobes was increased in the brains of Japanese honeybee workers involved in the formation of a hot defensive bee ball. mellifera, and showed that Acks has characteristics similar to kakusei and can be used to visualize active brain regions in A. cerana homolog ( AcksвЂЉ= Apis cerana kaku sei) of kakusei, an immediate early gene that we previously identified from A. In the present study, we attempted to analyze the neural basis of this behavior by mapping the active brain regions of Japanese honeybee workers during the formation of a hot defensive bee ball. mellifera ligustica), on the other hand, does not exhibit this behavior, and their colonies are often destroyed by a hornet attack. Instead of stinging the hornet, Japanese honeybees form a вЂњhot defensive bee ballвЂќ by surrounding the hornet en masse, killing it with heat. Although honeybees commonly use their stingers to counterattack predators, the Japanese honeybee ( Apis cerana japonica) uses a different strategy to fight against the giant hornet ( Vespa mandarinia japonica).

The neural bases of such behaviors, however, remain largely unknown. Anti-predator behaviors are essential to survival for most animals.

Materials studio heat of formation