Sugar discrimination and gustatory thresholds in captive-born frugivorous Old World Bats

LeBlanc, David J.; Nassar, Jafet M.

doi:10.1515/mamm.2000.64.2.135

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…2 ). Similar behavioral preference was also recorded in two other Old World frugivorous bats ( 38 ). Cell-based assays consistently demonstrated that the sweet taste receptors of two Old World frugivorous bats ( R. aegyptiacus and P. vampyrus ) showed clear dose-dependent responses to sucrose and fructose, although not to glucose ( Fig.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Loss of sweet taste despite the conservation of sweet receptor genes in insectivorous bats

Jiao

Xie

Zhang

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The evolution of taste perception is usually associated with the ecology and dietary changes of organisms. However, the association between feeding ecology and taste receptor evolution is unclear in some lineages of vertebrate animals. One example is the sweet taste receptor gene Tas1r2. Previous analysis of partial sequences has revealed that Tas1r2 has undergone equally strong purifying selection between insectivorous and frugivorous bats. To test whether the sweet taste function is also important in bats with contrasting diets, we examined the complete coding sequences of both sweet taste receptor genes (Tas1r2 and Tas1r3) in 34 representative bat species. Although these two genes are highly conserved between frugivorous and insectivorous bats at the sequence level, our behavioral experiments revealed that an insectivorous bat (Myotis ricketti) showed no preference for natural sugars, whereas the frugivorous species (Rousettus leschenaultii) showed strong preferences for sucrose and fructose. Furthermore, while both sweet taste receptor genes are expressed in the taste tissue of insectivorous and frugivorous bats, our cell-based assays revealed striking functional divergence: the sweet taste receptors of frugivorous bats are able to respond to natural sugars whereas those of insectivorous bats are not, which is consistent with the behavioral preference tests, suggesting that functional evolution of sweet taste receptors is closely related to diet. This comprehensive study suggests that using sequence conservation alone could be misleading in inferring protein and physiological function and highlights the power of combining behavioral experiments, expression analysis, and functional assays in molecular evolutionary studies.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Loss of sweet taste despite the conservation of sweet receptor genes in insectivorous bats

Jiao

Xie

Zhang

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The Egyptian fruit bats' preference for sucrose over fructose, and for fructose over glucose, is similar to that of other Old World fruit bats, and this pattern has been explained by the lower threshold for tasting sucrose than fructose or glucose in these bats (Herrera et al, 2000). The pattern of sugar preferences shown by female and male bats was very similar; however, females did not appear to find differences between fructose and glucose in ethanol-free mixtures, whereas males did.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 53%

Sugars are complementary resources to ethanol in foods consumed by Egyptian fruit bats

Sánchez

Kotler

Korine

et al. 2008

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYFood resources are complementary for a forager if their contribution to fitness is higher when consumed together than when consumed independently, e.g. ingesting one may reduce the toxic effects of another. The concentration of potentially toxic ethanol, [EtOH], in fleshy fruit increases during ripening and affects food choices by Egyptian fruit bats, becoming deterrent at high concentrations (у1%). However, ethanol toxicity is apparently reduced when ingested along with some sugars; more with fructose than with sucrose or glucose. We predicted (1) that ingested ethanol is eliminated faster by bats eating fructose than by bats eating sucrose or glucose, (2) that the marginal value of fructose-containing food (food+fructose) increases with increasing [EtOH] more than the marginal value of sucrose-or glucose-containing food (food+sucrose, food+glucose), and (3) that by increasing [EtOH] the marginal value of food+sucose is incremented more than that of food+glucose. Ethanol in bat breath declined faster after they ate fructose than after eating sucrose or glucose. When food [EtOH] increased, the marginal value of food+fructose increased relative to food+glucose. However, the marginal value of food+sucrose increased with increasing [EtOH] more than food+fructose or food+glucose. Although fructose enhanced the rate at which ethanol declined in Egyptian fruit bat breath more than the other sugars, the bats treated both fructose and sucrose as complementary to ethanol. This suggests that in the wild, the amount of ethanol-containing fruit consumed or rejected by Egyptian fruit bats may be related to the fruit's own sugar content and composition, and/or the near-by availability of other sucrose-and fructose-containing fruits.

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“…While the role of amino acids for food selection in pteropodid and phyllostomid bats is unknown, bats can use olfactory cues to find food sources (Rieger & Jakob ; Laska ; Thies, Kalko & Schnitzler ; von Helversen, Winkler & Bestmann ). Furthermore, they respond differently to the taste of the three most common sugar types found in nectar, indicating the existence of an ability to discriminate between subtle variation in nectar flavour (Herrera, Leblanc & Nassar ; Ayala‐Berdon et al . ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nitrogen and amino acids in nectar modify food selection of nectarivorous bats

Rodríguez-Peña

Stoner

Ayala-Berdon

et al. 2013

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Summary1. Chiropterophilic flowers secrete sugar nectar with low-Nitrogen (N hereafter) content and small amounts of amino acids, which may function to attract animals; nevertheless, the role that micronutrients have on the foraging decisions of Neotropical nectarivorous bats is unknown. 2. We offered the nectar specialist Leptonycteris yerbabueanae and the omnivore Glossophaga soricina pairs of experimental diets mimicking either the N content or the relative abundance of 17 amino acids found in the floral nectar from the main plant species visited by these bats in a tropical dry forest. We addressed the following research questions: (i) Do bats select N-containing or sugar-only nectar differently based on bats' N nutritional status? (ii) Does the presence of N in nectar affect the capacity of bats to discriminate and select other nectar traits such as sugar concentration? and (iii) Are bats able to distinguish among the flavours generated by the amino acid relative abundance present in the nectar from plants they typically encounter in nature? 3. Our results showed that: (i) bats did not consider nectar N content regardless of their N nutritional condition, (ii) the nectar specialist L. yerbabuenae showed a preference for the most concentrated sugar-only nectar but changed to be indifferent when nectar contained N, and (iii) L. yerbabuenae preferred diets without amino acids and preferred the taste of the amino acids present in the nectar of Pachycereus pecten (Cactaceae) over those present in the nectar of Ceiba aesculifolia (Bombacaceae). 4. Our results suggest that regardless of the low concentrations at which N and amino acids are present in floral nectar, their presence affects bats' food selection by interfering with the bats' ability to detect differences in sugar concentrations, and by offering particular flavours that can be perceived and selected by nectarivorous bats. We discuss the ecological implications of the presence of N and amino acids in nectar on bats' foraging decisions.

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Sugar discrimination and gustatory thresholds in captive-born frugivorous Old World Bats

Cited by 11 publications

References 10 publications

Loss of sweet taste despite the conservation of sweet receptor genes in insectivorous bats

Loss of sweet taste despite the conservation of sweet receptor genes in insectivorous bats

Sugars are complementary resources to ethanol in foods consumed by Egyptian fruit bats

Nitrogen and amino acids in nectar modify food selection of nectarivorous bats

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