Web edition: March 7, 2013 Print edition: April 20, 2013;
Vol.183 #8 (p. 17) Bees apparently have their own version of
Starbucks and may even get hooked on the joe: Honeybees are more
likely to remember a flower that laces its nectar with a hit of
caffeine, a new study shows. “This is the first instance to show
that something we use as a drug is also a drug ecologically,”
says study leader Geraldine Wright, a specialist in the
neuroscience of animal behavior at Newcastle University in
England. Experiments probing the effects of caffeine on the
bees’ brains suggest the drug strengthens brain reward
circuitry, Wright and her colleagues report in the March 8
Science. Many plants have bitter compounds in their leaves —
caffeine itself or opiates, for example — that may deter animals
from eating them. And it’s fairly common for the compounds to
also show up in nectar, even though the plant nectar is all
about attraction, not deterrence. “It’s very paradoxical and
surprisingly common” says pollination biologist Reb