ArticleScientific reports2017
Bumblebees can discriminate between scent-marks deposited by conspecifics.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Testing Bottom-up Cuing Effects on Target Detection and Discrimination in Bumblebees.Journal of insect behavior · 2026Article
- Bumblebees learn to use antennal and tarsal taste to predict the presence of nectar rewards in flowers.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- The behavioural responses of bumblebeesRoyal Society open science · 2024Article
- Bumble Bees (Insects · 2023Article
- The Ability of Bumblebees Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera: Apidae) to Detect Floral Humidity is Dependent Upon Environmental Humidity.Environmental entomology · 2022Article
- Flower sharing and pollinator health: a behavioural perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Alien balsams, strawberries and their pollinators in a warmer world.BMC plant biology · 2021Article
- Different effects of reward value and saliency during bumblebee visual search for multiple rewarding targets.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Using radio frequency identification and locomotor activity monitoring to assess sleep, locomotor, and foraging rhythmicity in bumblebees.STAR protocols · 2021Article
- Bumblebees can detect floral humidity.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Intraspecific relationships between floral signals and rewards with implications for plant fitness.AoB PLANTS · 2021Review
- Foraging Bumblebees Selectively Attend to Other Types of Bees Based on Their Reward-Predictive Value.Insects · 2020Article
- Floral temperature patterns can function as floral guides.Arthropod-plant interactions · 2020Article
- Nectar robbing in bellflower (Sesamum radiatum) benefited pollinators but unaffected maternal function of plant reproduction.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Cross-modal transfer in visual and nonvisual cues in bumblebees.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Article
- Bumblebees distinguish floral scent patterns, and can transfer these to corresponding visual patterns.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Iridescence impairs object recognition in bumblebees.Scientific reports · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bumblebees secrete a substance from their tarsi wherever they land, which can be detected by conspecifics. These secretions are referred to as scent-marks, which bumblebees are able to use as social cues. Although it has been found that bumblebees can detect and associate scent-marks with rewarding or unrewarding flowers, their ability at discriminating between scent-marks from bumblebees of differing relatedness is unknown. We performed three separate experiments with bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), where they were repeatedly exposed to rewarding and unrewarding artificial flowers simultaneously. Each flower type carried scent-marks from conspecifics of differing relatedness or were unmarked. We found that bumblebees are able to distinguish between 1. Unmarked flowers and flowers that they themselves had scent-marked, 2. Flowers scent-marked by themselves and flowers scent-marked by others in their nest (nestmates), and 3. Flowers scent-marked by their nestmates and flowers scent-marked by non-nestmates. The bumblebees found it more difficult to discriminate between each of the flower types when both flower types were scent-marked. Our findings show that bumblebees have the ability to discriminate between scent-marks of conspecifics, which are potentially very similar in their chemical composition, and they can use this ability to improve their foraging success.
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.