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PLoS Comput Biol

Title:		Compounds without borders: A mechanism for quantifying complex odors and responses to scent-pollution in bumblebees
Author(s):		Sprayberry JDH;
Address:		"Departments of Biology & Neuroscience, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States of America"
Journal Title:		PLoS Comput Biol
Year:		2020
Volume:		20200422
Issue:		4
Page Number:		e1007765 -
DOI:		10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007765
ISSN/ISBN:		1553-7358 (Electronic) 1553-734X (Print) 1553-734X (Linking)
Abstract:		Recent work has indicated that anthropogenic pollution of floral-scent may have negative impacts on bumblebee foraging behavior. We need quantitative tools to both measure how much pollution of a learned floral-odor bumblebees can tolerate and identify which scent-pollutants are problematic. This study used encoding characteristics of insect olfactory systems to develop a new paradigm for quantifying complex odors. This 'Compounds Without Borders' method builds multidimensional vectors of scents based on physiologically relevant physical characteristics of component odorant-compounds. The angular distance between CWB-vectors then provides a single quantitative variable describing how similar (or dissimilar) two complex odors are. This angular representation of odor similarity is predictive of bumblebees' behavior in an associative odor learning task
Keywords:		"*Air Pollutants/analysis/chemistry Animals Appetitive Behavior/*physiology Bees/*physiology Computational Biology *Models, Biological Odorants/*analysis;"
Notes:		"MedlineSprayberry, Jordanna D H eng 2020/04/23 PLoS Comput Biol. 2020 Apr 22; 16(4):e1007765. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007765. eCollection 2020 Apr"