Experience-dependent plasticity in the central nervous system allows an animal to adapt its responses to stimuli over different time scales. In this study, we explored the impacts of adult foraging experience on early olfactory processing by comparing naturally foraging honey bees, Apis mellifera, with those that experienced a chronic reduction in adult foraging experience. We placed age-matched sets of sister honey bees into two different olfactory conditions, in which animals were allowed to forage ad libitum. In one condition, we restricted foraging experience by placing honey bees in a tent in which both sucrose and pollen resources were associated with a single odor. In the second condition, honey bees were allowed to forage freely and therefore encounter a diversity of naturally occurring resourceassociated olfactory experiences. We found that honey bees with restricted foraging experiences had altered antennal lobe development. We measured the glomerular responses to odors using calcium imaging in the antennal lobe, and found that natural olfactory experience also enhanced the inter-individual variation in glomerular response profiles to odors. Additionally, we found that honey bees with adult restricted foraging experience did not distinguish relevant components of an odor mixture in a behavioral assay as did their freely foraging siblings. This study highlights the impacts of individual experience on early olfactory processing at multiple levels.

19Experience-dependent plasticity in the central nervous system allows an animal to 20 adaptively change their responses to stimuli over different time scales. In this study we 21 explored the different time frames and mechanisms over which olfactory experience-22Canonically, in these brain regions, the combinatorial nature of activity patterns that 48 encode different odors is conserved across animals and are species specific (Galizia et 49 al., 1999b). These olfactory codes result from binding of volatile chemicals to peripheral 50 olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) that then project, via axon terminals, to glomeruli in 51 the OB in mammals or the AL in insects (Buck and Axel, 1991, Hildebrand and 52