INVESTIGADORES
BARROZO Romina Beatriz
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Bitter taste perception in the blood-sucking insect Rhodnius prolixus
Autor/es:
7. ORTEGA INSAURRALDE I, PONTES G, BARROZO RB.
Reunión:
Congreso; II Latin American Association of Chemical Ecology; 2012
Resumen:
The taste sense plays a
crucial role in animals life informing them about the
nutritional quality of a
food source. Moreover it provides a means of discrimination
between nutrient-rich
substrates, from harmful, mostly bitter-tasting. Rhodnius
prolixus is a hematophagous insect
that feeds on blood from small vessels of
vertebrate hosts. Once
insects pierced the host skin, they move their mouthparts
until a venule or an
arteriole is reached. Insects pump a small quantity of blood
initiating the sampling
phase of food. During this period, the taste sense might
become crucial in terms of
the assessment of food quality. Our goal in this work
was to determine whether
the bitter taste is perceived by bugs (beyond the wellknown
phagostimulant ATP).The
feeding response of bugs was analyzed by
measuring the weight gain
of insects to different test diets in an artificial feeder
set-up during 10 min. Our
results show that R. prolixus can perceive different
bitter taste sense in
dose-dependent manner, although this was only evident in
the presence of ATP.
Notably, bitter compounds have an inhibitory effect on the
feeding behavior of bugs.
The importance the taste sense plays in the feeding
behavior, for vectors of
Chagas disease in Latin America, begins to be
understood.