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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Feb 16.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Biol. 2015 Feb 16;25(4):R141–R142. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.026

Figure 1. Taste loss in penguins.

Figure 1

Species tree of 27 birds and human showing presence (check marks) and absence (crosses) of sweet, umami, bitter, sour, and salty tastes in penguins (shaded) and outgroups, inferred from genes for taste receptors (shown at the top of the figure). Neither check mark nor cross is given to a species when there is no genetic/genomic data for such an inference. Species with available genome sequences are shown in black, whereas those without available genome sequences are shown in grey. The red-throated loon Gavia stellata is considered a putative bitter non-taster due to the pseudogenizations of Tas2r1 and Tas2r2 that are independent from the penguin-specific pseudogenizations. Note that the umami taste receptor has been repurposed to detect sweet in the hummingbird Calypte anna [10]. As a result, C. anna possesses the sweet taste, in addition to a weak umami taste. See also FigureS1 and Tables S1.