Age affects odor-evoked calcium responses in the ant antennal lobe

Calcium imaging experiments were performed on the clonal raider ant antennal lobe to determine whether odor coding is modulated during aging. Ants were either two weeks old or two months old, corresponding to nurse-like and forager-like behavioral patterns. Ants are clonal line B with transgene insert [ie-DsRed, ObirOrco-QF2, 15xQUAS-GCaMP6s]. GCaMP6s labels all Orco-positive antennal lobe glomeruli and allows recording odor responses throughout the antennal lobe using volumetric imaging. Associated with Hart et al. 2024. Pheromone representation in the ant antennal lobe changes with age. Current Biology 34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.05.031 Ants were stimulated with 5 general odorants (3-hexanone, isopropanol, ethanol, propionic acid, ethylpyrazine) and 2 alarm pheromones (4-methyl-3-heptanone and 4-methyl-3-heptanol) all at either 3% or 48% concentration (volume/volume in paraffin oil). Experiments had a 3s lag time and a 5s stimulus time, total recording time 48s, 0.83 volumes/second. 33 Z-planes were imaged in each volume. Ants were imaged on different days, and the following outline describes experiment conditions for the dataset. Two weeks old experiment days: 1-18-2023 - 48% odor conc. 1-20-2023 - 48% odor conc. 2-24-2023 - 48% odor conc. 1-17-2023 - 3% odor conc. Two months old experiment days: 1-10-2023 - 48% odor conc. 4-6-2023 - 48% odor conc. 1-11-2023 - 3% odor conc.