| Title |
Bumblebees distinguish floral scent patterns, and can transfer these to corresponding visual patterns
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, June 2018
|
| DOI | 10.1098/rspb.2018.0661 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
David A. Lawson, Lars Chittka, Heather M. Whitney, Sean A. Rands |
| Abstract |
Flowers act as multisensory billboards to pollinators by using a range of sensory modalities such as visual patterns and scents. Different floral organs release differing compositions and quantities of the volatiles contributing to floral scent, suggesting that scent may be patterned within flowers. Early experiments suggested that pollinators can distinguish between the scents of differing floral regions, but little is known about how these potential scent patterns might influence pollinators. We show that bumblebees can learn different spatial patterns of the same scent, and that they are better at learning to distinguish between flowers when the scent pattern corresponds to a matching visual pattern. Surprisingly, once bees have learnt the spatial arrangement of a scent pattern, they subsequently prefer to visit novel unscented flowers that have an identical arrangement of visual marks, suggesting that multimodal floral signals may exploit the mechanisms by which learnt information is stored by the bee. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 56 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 18 | 32% |
| United States | 5 | 9% |
| Spain | 3 | 5% |
| Denmark | 2 | 4% |
| Canada | 2 | 4% |
| Japan | 2 | 4% |
| India | 1 | 2% |
| Germany | 1 | 2% |
| Australia | 1 | 2% |
| Other | 2 | 4% |
| Unknown | 19 | 34% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 34 | 61% |
| Scientists | 20 | 36% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 2% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 1 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 126 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 126 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 30 | 24% |
| Researcher | 21 | 17% |
| Student > Bachelor | 16 | 13% |
| Student > Master | 15 | 12% |
| Other | 8 | 6% |
| Other | 17 | 13% |
| Unknown | 19 | 15% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 59 | 47% |
| Neuroscience | 10 | 8% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 7 | 6% |
| Environmental Science | 6 | 5% |
| Social Sciences | 3 | 2% |
| Other | 13 | 10% |
| Unknown | 28 | 22% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 133. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 May 2023.
All research outputs
#312,479
of 25,382,440 outputs
Outputs from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#768
of 11,335 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#6,813
of 341,533 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#12
of 156 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,382,440 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,335 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 341,533 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 156 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.