Whitney Heather M, Dyer Adrian, Chittka Lars, Rands Sean A, Glover Beverley J
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EA, UK.
Naturwissenschaften. 2008 Sep;95(9):845-50. doi: 10.1007/s00114-008-0393-9. Epub 2008 Jun 4.
Several authors have found that flowers that are warmer than their surrounding environment have an advantage in attracting pollinators. Bumblebees will forage preferentially on warmer flowers, even if equal nutritional reward is available in cooler flowers. This raises the question of whether warmth and sucrose concentration are processed independently by bees, or whether sweetness detectors respond to higher sugar concentration as well as higher temperature. We find that bumblebees can use lower temperature as a cue to higher sucrose reward, showing that bees appear to process the two parameters strictly independently. Moreover, we demonstrate that sucrose concentration takes precedence over warmth, so that when there is a difference in sucrose concentration, bees will typically choose the sweeter feeder, even if the less sweet feeder is several degrees warmer.
几位作者发现，温度高于周围环境的花朵在吸引传粉者方面具有优势。即使较凉爽的花朵能提供同等的营养回报，大黄蜂也会优先在较温暖的花朵上觅食。这就引出了一个问题：蜜蜂是独立处理温度和蔗糖浓度这两个因素，还是甜味感受器对较高的糖浓度和较高的温度都会做出反应。我们发现，大黄蜂可以利用较低的温度作为蔗糖回报更高的线索，这表明蜜蜂似乎是严格独立地处理这两个参数。此外，我们还证明了蔗糖浓度比温度更重要，所以当蔗糖浓度存在差异时，即使不太甜的喂食器温度高出几度，蜜蜂通常也会选择更甜的喂食器。
