ArticleiScience2022
Temporal responses of bumblebee gustatory neurons to sugars.
Article in iScience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bumblebees learn to use antennal and tarsal taste to predict the presence of nectar rewards in flowers.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Expression analyses of chemosensory genes provide insights into evolution of gustatory receptor genes in the bumble bee Bombus impatiens.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- The concentration and energetic content of floral nectar sugars: calculation, conversions, and common confusions.Journal of pollination ecology · 2025Article
- Gustatory sensitivity to amino acids in bumblebee mouthparts.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Mouthparts of the bumblebee (eLife · 2023Article
- Gustation in insects: taste qualities and types of evidence used to show taste function of specific body parts.Journal of insect science (Online) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The sense of taste permits the recognition of valuable nutrients and the avoidance of potential toxins. Previously, we found that bumblebees have a specialized mechanism for sensing sugars whereby two gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs) within the galeal sensilla of the bees' mouthparts exhibit bursts of spikes. Here, we show that the temporal firing patterns of these GRNs separate sugars into four distinct groups that correlate with sugar nutritional value and palatability. We also identified a third GRN that responded to stimulation with relatively high concentrations of fructose, sucrose, and maltose. Sugars that were nonmetabolizable or toxic suppressed the responses of bursting GRNs to sucrose. These abilities to encode information about sugar value are a refinement to the bumblebee's sense of sweet taste that could be an adaptation that enables precise calculations of the nature and nutritional value of floral nectar.
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Registered trials
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