The University of Arizona
Insect Science: the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program
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Angelique C. Paulk

Angelique Paulk

Bio Sketch

Research Interests:

My current research interests are in the mechanisms of visual processing and learning and memory in bumblebees and honeybees. I use fine glass tubes to record from individual cells in the bee brain while presenting visual cues to the bee itself. By determining how these cells respond to these visual cues, we can better understand how bees can produce behaviorally demonstrated visual capabilities similar to those of primates (e.g. color vision, motion perception, distance estimation, landmark recognition; Srinivasan, 2003). Also, bees, as well as most insects, possess mushroom bodies (MBs), a central brain structure thought to be a center for learning and memory. Bees are unique among insects in that they have direct, layered visual input to the MBs. By using intracellular recordings from these visual input cells and recordings from the postsynaptic MB cells, we can determine how the MBs could be involved in visual learning and memory in bees.

On the other hand, however I describe my research on the mechanisms of visual learning and memory in the bees, I must say that my research interests expand far beyond these topics. I have always been fascinated by insects. They are quite simply amazing creatures, surviving the harsh Nairobi deserts, the Arctic wastelands, and even thriving despite humanity’s best efforts to the contrary. What amazes me about them is their ability to navigate and interact with their environments using such tiny brains. I am interested in the mechanisms of how they can process their world around them integrating visual, mechanical, auditory, olfactory and even infrared information, to produce the appropriate behaviors to respond to their environments. In addition, I am interested in how this information is used to produce behaviors, which will ultimately help us to understand these amazing creatures and just how they do it.