Ingeborg Beling and the time memory in honeybees: almost one hundred years of research.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol
; 210(2): 189-201, 2024 Mar.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38472409
ABSTRACT
Bees are known for their ability to forage with high efficiency. One of their strategies to avoid unproductive foraging is to be at the food source at the right time of the day. Approximately one hundred years ago, researchers discovered that honeybees have a remarkable time memory, which they use for optimizing foraging. Ingeborg Beling was the first to examine this time memory experimentally. In her doctoral thesis, completed under the mentorship of Karl von Frisch in 1929, she systematically examined the capability of honeybees to remember specific times of the day at which they had been trained to appear at a feeding station. Beling was a pioneer in chronobiology, as she described the basic characteristics of the circadian clock on which the honeybee's time memory is based. Unfortunately, after a few years of extremely productive research, she ended her scientific career, probably due to family reasons or political pressure to reduce the number of women in the workforce. Here, we present a biographical sketch of Ingeborg Beling and review her research on the time memory of honeybees. Furthermore, we discuss the significance of her work, considering what is known about time memory today - nearly 100 years after she conducted her experiments.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Conducta Alimentaria
/
Alimentos
Límite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol
Asunto de la revista:
CIENCIAS DO COMPORTAMENTO
/
NEUROLOGIA
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Alemania