Format: ORAL

Geraldine A. Wright

Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Floral nectar and pollen are the currencies of the transactions that occur among flowering plants and their animal pollinators. The sense of taste allows pollinators to make rapid decisions about food quality. Specialist feeders like bees, however, that feed on nectar and pollen may have adaptations that permit them to have greater acuity for compounds like sugars that are relevant to their survival. We know surprisingly little about the way that the chemical composition of nectar influences floral choice by pollinators. In this talk, I will review what we know about the bees sense of taste. My lab has discovered that bees have specialized mechanisms for the perception and encoding of sugar molecules in food which make them capable of discriminating among sugar compounds. We have also found that bee species have specific preferences for nectar cocktails, indicating that bees may exert selective pressure on plants to produce nectar suited to their metabolic needs.