Preventing malnutrition through consuming nutritionally appropriate resources represents a challenge for foraging animals. This is due to often high variation in the nutritional quality of available resources. Foragers consequently need to evaluate different food sources. However, even the same food source can provide a plethora of nutritional and non-nutritional cues, which could serve for quality assessment. We show that bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, overcome this challenge by relying on lipids as nutritional cue when selecting pollen. The bees 'prioritised' lipid perception in learning experiments and avoided lipid consumption in feeding experiments, which supported survival and reproduction. In contrast, survival and reproduction were severely reduced by increased lipid contents. Our study highlights the importance of fat regulation for pollen foraging bumblebees. It also reveals that nutrient perception, nutrient regulation and reproductive fitness can be linked, which represents an effective strategy enabling quick foraging decisions that prevent malnutrition and maximise fitness.

中文翻译：

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关于低脂的最佳选择：将营养素的认知，调节和健康联系起来。

通过消耗营养适当的资源来预防营养不良，是觅食动物的挑战。这是由于可用资源的营养质量经常差异很大。因此，觅食者需要评估不同的食物来源。但是，即使是相同的食物来源也可以提供过多的营养和非营养线索，可以用于质量评估。我们显示，大黄蜂，熊熊ter，在选择花粉时依靠脂质作为营养提示而克服了这一挑战。蜜蜂在学习实验中“优先考虑”了脂质的感知，并避免了在进食实验中消耗脂质，从而支持了存活和繁殖。相反，脂质含量的增加严重降低了存活和繁殖。我们的研究强调了脂肪调节对花粉觅食大黄蜂的重要性。它还揭示了营养素的感知，营养素的调节和生殖健康之间的联系，这是一种有效的策略，可以快速进行觅食决策，从而防止营养不良并最大限度地提高健康水平。