Sexual dimorphisms of the olfactory system are conserved across bumblebee species

Abstract

Bumblebees are integral to ecosystems as crucial pollinators. However, neuroscience has kept its focus on studying workers of commercially available species: Bombus terrestris (Europe), B. impatiens (North America), and B. ignitus (Asia). Here, we conducted a detailed comparative study of the brain and antennal anatomy in wild worker and male bumblebees of 6 common European species (B. terrestris, B. pascuorum, B. pratorum, B. lapidarius, B. hypnorum, and B. lucorum), with specific focus on their peripheral and central olfactory system. We found striking sexual dimorphisms that remain consistent across species and may underlie the differences in foraging preferences in bumblebees. We also developed a bespoke machine learning-based pipeline for automatic segmentation of confocal images of antennal lobes, which greatly speeds up the image analysis.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@article{oppersma2026sexual,
  title = {{Sexual dimorphisms of the olfactory system are conserved across bumblebee species}},
  author = {Jorn Oppersma and Wenke E and W. Carolina Gomez-Ramirez and Iman Muktar and Timothy Wise and Miranda Bolton and Shuang Chen and Amir Atapour-Abarghouei and Carlo Polidori and Olena Riabinina},
  journal = {iScience},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1016/j.isci.2026.118037},
  url = {https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(26)03420-6},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Sexual dimorphisms of the olfactory system are conserved across bumblebee species
AU  - Jorn Oppersma
AU  - Wenke E
AU  - W. Carolina Gomez-Ramirez
AU  - Iman Muktar
AU  - Timothy Wise
AU  - Miranda Bolton
AU  - Shuang Chen
AU  - Amir Atapour-Abarghouei
AU  - Carlo Polidori
AU  - Olena Riabinina
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/28
JO  - iScience
DO  - 10.1016/j.isci.2026.118037
UR  - https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(26)03420-6
AB  - Bumblebees are integral to ecosystems as crucial pollinators. However, neuroscience has kept its focus on studying workers of commercially available species: Bombus terrestris (Europe), B. impatiens (North America), and B. ignitus (Asia). Here, we conducted a detailed comparative study of the brain and antennal anatomy in wild worker and male bumblebees of 6 common European species (B. terrestris, B. pascuorum, B. pratorum, B. lapidarius, B. hypnorum, and B. lucorum), with specific focus on their peripheral and central olfactory system. We found striking sexual dimorphisms that remain consistent across species and may underlie the differences in foraging preferences in bumblebees. We also developed a bespoke machine learning-based pipeline for automatic segmentation of confocal images of antennal lobes, which greatly speeds up the image analysis.
SN  - 2589-0042
ER  -

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