Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA), Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), Université de Toulouse; CNRS, UPS, 31062, Toulouse cedex 9, France.
Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Biological and Experimental Psychology, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 22;8(1):1343. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-19715-1.
Taste perception allows discriminating edible from non-edible items and is crucial for survival. In the honey bee, the gustatory sense has remained largely unexplored, as tastants have been traditionally used as reinforcements rather than as stimuli to be learned and discriminated. Here we provide the first characterization of antennal gustatory perception in this insect using a novel conditioning protocol in which tastants are dissociated from their traditional food-reinforcement role to be learned as predictors of punishment. We found that bees have a limited gustatory repertoire via their antennae: they discriminate between broad gustatory modalities but not within modalities, and are unable to differentiate bitter substances from water. Coupling gustatory conditioning with blockade of aminergic pathways in the bee brain revealed that these pathways are not restricted to encode reinforcements but may also encode conditioned stimuli. Our results reveal unknown aspects of honey bee gustation, and bring new elements for comparative analyses of gustatory perception in animals.
味觉感知使生物能够区分可食用与不可食用的物品，对生存至关重要。在蜜蜂中，由于味觉刺激物传统上被用作强化物，而不是用于学习和区分的刺激物，因此其味觉感知在很大程度上仍未被探索。在这里，我们使用一种新颖的条件反射协议，首次对这种昆虫的触角味觉感知进行了描述，该协议将味觉刺激物与其传统的食物强化作用分离，以作为惩罚的预测因子进行学习。我们发现，蜜蜂通过其触角具有有限的味觉感受能力：它们可以区分广泛的味觉模态，但不能在模态内进行区分，并且无法将苦味物质与水区分开。将味觉条件反射与蜜蜂大脑中的胺能途径阻断相结合的结果表明，这些途径不仅局限于编码强化物，还可能编码条件刺激。我们的研究结果揭示了蜜蜂味觉的未知方面，并为动物味觉感知的比较分析带来了新的元素。
