Response characteristics of vibration‐sensitive interneurons related to Johnston's organ in the honeybee, Apis mellifera

Honeybees detect airborne vibration by means of Johnston's organ (JO), located in the pedicel of each antenna. In this study we identified two types of vibration‐sensitive interneurons with arborizations in the primary sensory area of the JO, namely, the dorsal lobe‐interneuron 1 (DL‐Int‐1) and dorsal lobe‐interneuron 2 (DL‐Int‐2) using intracellular recordings combined with intracellular staining. For visualizing overlapping areas between the JO sensory terminals and the branches of these identified interneurons, the three‐dimensional images of the individual neurons were registered into the standard atlas of the honeybee brain (Brandt et al. [2005] J Comp Neurol 492:1–19). Both DL‐Int‐1 and DL‐Int‐2 overlapped with the central terminal area of receptor neurons of the JO in the DL. For DL‐Int‐1 an on–off phasic excitation was elicited by vibrational stimuli applied to the JO when the spontaneous spike frequency was low, whereas tonic inhibition was induced when it was high. Moreover, current injection into a DL‐Int‐1 led to changes of the response pattern from on–off phasic excitation to tonic inhibition, in response to the vibratory stimulation. Although the vibration usually induced on–off phasic excitation in DL‐Int‐1, vibration applied immediately after odor stimulation induced tonic inhibition in it. DL‐Int‐2 responded to vibration stimuli applied to the JO by a tonic burst and were most sensitive to 265 Hz vibration, which is coincident with the strongest frequency of airborne vibrations arising during the waggle dance. These results suggest that DL‐Int‐1 and DL‐Int‐2 are related to coding of the duration of the vibration as sensed by the JO. J. Comp. Neurol. 515:145–160, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.