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Early origin of sweet perception in the songbird radiation

Early origin of sweet perception in the songbird radiation

Authors :
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
Yasuka Toda
Source :
Science. 373:226-231
Publication Year :
2021
Publisher :
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2021.

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

Details

ISSN :
10959203 and 00368075
Volume :
373
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Science
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....519ea78c1bb3cf87ffcab31e7382ef3c
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf6505