Transcriptomic responses to location learning by honeybee dance-followers

We explore whether the gene expression patterns that are induced through individual learning about foraging locations are mirrored when bees learn about those same locations from their nestmates. We show that ~5% of the genes that we previously identified in dancers are also differentially expressed by bees that followed dances for the same foraging sites, located at different distance from the hive, but had never visited them. Also responses to learning about target direction were also in part mirrored in the brains of dance followers. Our findings show a molecular footprint of the transfer of learnt information from one animal to another through this extraordinary communication system, highlighting the dynamic role of the genome in mediating even very short-term behavioural changes.