We see, sense and create a world for ourselves, so do other animals. Insects have a long evolutionary history and have tremendous sensory systems to sense their world for surviving. My major research interest is to explore how do insects sense their world, especially the neural mechanism of vision. To understand how the chromatic information from different types of photoreceptor interact and integrate to each other, we measure spectral sensitivity and record color opponency in the visual system electrophysiologically. With three types of photoreceptor (being sensitive to ultraviolet, blue and green instead of blue, green and red in our human retina), honeybees also have a trichromatic visual system. To further understand how honey bees see colors and distinguish the difference between colors, and how the color information associated with form vision to recognize the shape of an object, an image system for simulating animal eye has been built and behavioral tests are employed to train honeybee workers with sugar water reward.

I am also interested in the magnetoreception of honeybee. Honey bees have ability to detect the earth’s magnetic field, and the suspected magnetoreceptors are the iron granules in their abdomen. To identify the sensing route of honeybee’s magnetoreception, we conducted a classical conditioning experiment with monitoring the responses of proboscis extension reflex (PER). Honeybees were successfully trained to associate the magnetic stimulus with sucrose reward after two days of training. When the neural connection of ventral nerve cord (VNC) between the abdomen and the thorax was cut, the honey bees no longer associated the magnetic stimulus with the sucrose reward but could still respond to olfactory PER task. The neural responses elicited to the change of magnetic field were also recorded at the VNC. Our results suggest that the honeybee is a new model animal for the investigation of magnetite-based magnetoreception.