ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2014
The tarsal taste of honey bees: behavioral and electrophysiological analyses.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 148 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identification and Expression Profiling of Scorpion Ionotropic Receptors and Gustatory Receptors Based on the Transcriptomic Analysis.Integrative zoology · 2026Article
- Bumblebees learn to use antennal and tarsal taste to predict the presence of nectar rewards in flowers.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Behavioral Selectivity: Species-Specific Effects of Nutmeg, Cinnamon, and Clove Essential Oils onMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Pollen foraging preferences in honey bees and the nutrient profiles of the pollen.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Mouthparts of the bumblebee (eLife · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Taste recognition through tarsal gustatory sensilla potentially important for host selection in leaf beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae).Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Structure of the pecten neuropil pathway and its innervation by bimodal peg afferents in two scorpion species.PloS one · 2020Article
- Feeding by Tropilaelaps mercedesae on pre- and post-capped brood increases damage to Apis mellifera colonies.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Failure to Find Ethanol-Induced Conditioned Taste Aversion in Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.).Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2018Article
- Aversive gustatory learning and perception in honey bees.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Functional Characterization of the Gustatory Sensilla of Tarsi of the Female Polyphagous MothFrontiers in physiology · 2018Article
- Lateralization of Sucrose Responsiveness and Non-associative Learning in Honeybees.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Contact chemosensation of phytochemicals by insect herbivores.Natural product reports · 2017Review
- In search of evidence for the experience of pain in honeybees: A self-administration study.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Identification and Characterization of Odorant Binding Proteins in the Forelegs ofFrontiers in physiology · 2017Article
- Absence of food alternatives promotes risk-prone feeding of unpalatable substances in honey bees.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- A Novel Behavioral Assay to Investigate Gustatory Responses of Individual, Freely-moving Bumble Bees (Bombus terrestris).Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Taste plays a crucial role in the life of honey bees as their survival depends on the collection and intake of nectar and pollen, and other natural products. Here we studied the tarsal taste of honey bees through a series of behavioral and electrophysiological analyses. We characterized responsiveness to various sweet, salty and bitter tastants delivered to gustatory sensilla of the fore tarsi. Behavioral experiments showed that stimulation of opposite fore tarsi with sucrose and bitter substances or water yielded different outcomes depending on the stimulation sequence. When sucrose was applied first, thereby eliciting proboscis extension, no bitter substance could induce proboscis retraction, thus suggesting that the primacy of sucrose stimulation induced a central excitatory state. When bitter substances or water were applied first, sucrose stimulation could still elicit proboscis extension but to a lower level, thus suggesting central inhibition based on contradictory gustatory input on opposite tarsi. Electrophysiological experiments showed that receptor cells in the gustatory sensilla of the tarsomeres are highly sensitive to saline solutions at low concentrations. No evidence for receptors responding specifically to sucrose or to bitter substances was found in these sensilla. Receptor cells in the gustatory sensilla of the claws are highly sensitive to sucrose. Although bees do not possess dedicated bitter-taste receptors in the tarsi, indirect bitter detection is possible because bitter tastes inhibit sucrose receptor cells of the claws when mixed with sucrose solution. By combining behavioral and electrophysiological approaches, these results provide the first integrative study on tarsal taste detection in the honey bee.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.