Associate Professor of Biology Herm Lehman has published a manuscript titled, "Division of labor in the honey bee (Apis mellifera): the role of tyramine beta-hydroxlyase" in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Lehman's laboratory explores the neurochemical basis of behavior and in this paper he describes a link between the foraging behavior of honey bees, the level of a common neurotransmitter, and the amount of messenger RNA that encodes the enzyme necessary for the synthesis of the neurotransmitter. These findings are new and interesting because they support the notion that subtle changes in the expression of a gene involved in neurotransmitter synthesis can have a profound impact on animal behavior.
In addition, Lehman recently gave an invited lecture featuring these studies and the work of senior thesis students Matt VanHook 06' and Peter Burke 06' to the Departments of Biology and Chemistry at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Fla.
