ArticleiScience2026
Specialization and adaptation in pollen sterol use by wild bees.
Article in iScience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sterols are stabilizing components of membranes and hormone precursors in eukaryotes. Honeybees incorporate a subset of pollen-derived sterols into their tissues rather than converting phytosterols to cholesterol, as most insect herbivores do. To establish whether this approach to sterol acquisition was typical of all bees, we measured the sterolome of 56 bee species representing all major bee families to identify and quantify which pollen sterols they used. The Δ5 sterols, 24-methylenecholesterol, isofucosterol, and β-sitosterol, which are common components of pollen sterolomes, were also the main sterols in most bee species, but this was not so in a minority of species suggesting they had different sterol requirements. Generalists contained more 24-methylenecholesterol than their specialist congeners, suggesting an adaptation to use pollen sterols that occur widely in plants, whereas Asteraceae specialists use pollen sterols that are not used by generalists, which may explain the Asteraceae paradox. Overall, our data suggest an ecological rather than phylogenetic driver of bee sterol composition.
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.