Laboratorio de Insectos Sociales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE), CONICET - Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Sci Rep. 2023 May 19;13(1):8164. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-35163-y.
Division of labor is central to the ecological success of social insects. Among foragers of the honey bee, specialization for collecting nectar or pollen correlates with their sensitivity to sucrose. So far, differences in gustatory perception have been mostly studied in bees returning to the hive, but not during foraging. Here, we showed that the phase of the foraging visit (i.e. beginning or end) interacts with foraging specialization (i.e. predisposition to collect pollen or nectar) to modulate sucrose and pollen sensitivity in foragers. In concordance with previous studies, pollen foragers presented higher sucrose responsiveness than nectar foragers at the end of the foraging visit. On the contrary, pollen foragers were less responsive than nectar foragers at the beginning of the visit. Consistently, free-flying foragers accepted less concentrated sucrose solution during pollen gathering than immediately after entering the hive. Pollen perception also changes throughout foraging, as pollen foragers captured at the beginning of the visit learned and retained memories better when they were conditioned with pollen + sucrose as reward than when we used sucrose alone. Altogether, our results support the idea that changes in foragers' perception throughout the foraging visit contributes to task specialization.
分工是社会性昆虫在生态上取得成功的核心。在蜜蜂的觅食者中，专门采集花蜜或花粉与它们对蔗糖的敏感性相关。到目前为止，味觉感知的差异主要在返回蜂巢的蜜蜂中进行了研究，但在觅食过程中并没有进行研究。在这里，我们表明，觅食访问的阶段（即开始或结束）与觅食专业化（即收集花粉或花蜜的倾向）相互作用，以调节觅食者的蔗糖和花粉敏感性。与之前的研究一致，在觅食访问结束时，花粉觅食者对蔗糖的反应性高于花蜜觅食者。相反，在访问开始时，花粉觅食者的反应性低于花蜜觅食者。一致的是，在采集花粉的过程中，自由飞行的觅食者接受的高浓度蔗糖溶液比刚进入蜂巢时要少。花粉感知也会随着觅食而变化，因为在访问开始时捕获的花粉觅食者在接受花粉+蔗糖作为奖励的条件作用时，比仅接受蔗糖时，学习和保留记忆的效果更好。总之，我们的研究结果支持了这样一种观点，即在整个觅食过程中觅食者感知的变化有助于任务专业化。
