Are honey bees a suitable model for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders?
Date
2022
Authors
Bevelander, Breanne
Simko, Elena
Polizel Camilli, Marcelo
Thebeau, Jenna
da Silva, Marina
Markova, Sofiia
Lester, Tessa
Obshta, Oleksii
Biganski, Sarah
Brown, Vanessa
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Poster Presentation
Degree Level
Abstract
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) are a continuum of disorders caused
by prenatal exposure to ethanol. They affect an estimated 4% of Canadians. FASDs are associated with a host of complications including, but not limited to, cognitive difficulties, developmental delay, increased mortality, smaller birth weight, smaller brain size, as well as gross and fine motor issues.
It has been previously established that fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are a suitable invertebrate model for FASDs. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) share many similarities to Drosophila as a research model, but with the distinct advantage of highly social behaviour, similar to that of humans.
In this project we exposed honey bees to incremental, sublethal concentrations of ethanol during larval development and monitored their survival, developmental rate, and weight at adult emergence. We found that larval honey bees exposed to ≥6% ethanol experienced significantly higher mortality, developmental delay, and lower body weight at emergence. Accordingly, these results, in combination with ongoing neurobehavioural analyses of adult bees exposed to ethanol as larvae, suggest that honey bees may be an ideal model for human FASDs.
Description
Keywords
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, honeybees