1. Early origin of sweet perception in the songbird radiation
- Author
-
Maude W. Baldwin, Takashi Hayakawa, Alejandro Rico-Guevara, Yoshiro Ishimaru, Simon Yung Wa Sin, Tomoya Nakagita, James D. Crall, Timothy B. Sackton, Ayano Sakakibara, Takumi Misaka, Meng Ching Ko, Kana Uemura, Qiaoyi Liang, Pablo Oteiza, Scott V. Edwards, Shuichi Matsumura, William A. Buttemer, Eliot T. Miller, and Yasuka Toda
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,0301 basic medicine ,Sucrose ,Plant Nectar ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Sensory biology ,Carbohydrates ,Sensory system ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Receptors, G-Protein-Coupled ,Avian Proteins ,Birds ,Songbirds ,03 medical and health sciences ,Perception ,Animals ,Amino Acids ,Clade ,media_common ,Multidisciplinary ,biology ,Taste Perception ,Feeding Behavior ,biology.organism_classification ,Biological Evolution ,Evolutionary radiation ,Diet ,Songbird ,030104 developmental biology ,Evolutionary biology ,Protein Multimerization - Abstract
From savory to sweet Seeing a bird eat nectar from a flower is a common sight in our world. The ability to detect sugars, however, is not ancestral in the bird lineage, where most species were carnivorous. Toda et al. looked at receptors within the largest group of birds, the passerines or songbirds, and found that the emergence of sweet detection involved a single shift in a receptor for umami (see the Perspective by Barker). This ancient change facilitated sugar detection not just in nectar feeding birds, but also across the songbird group, and in a way that was different from, though convergent with, that in hummingbirds. Science , abf6505, this issue p. 226 ; see also abj6746, p. 154
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF