Resource tracking by eastern chipmunks: the sampling of renewing patches

Hall, Calvin S.; Humphries, Murray M.; Kramer, Donald L.

doi:10.1139/z07-030

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Wood mice may obtain such information through repeated sampling of seeds within a patch and select a particular patch for foraging based on this information. This type of patch selection behaviours is frequently observed in a number of vertebrate species including rodents (Lima 1984;Valone & Brown 1989;Valone 1991;Hall, Humphries & Kramer 2007).…”

Section: W I T H I N -P L a N T V A R I A T I O N I N S E E D T R A Imentioning

confidence: 80%

Effects of within‐plant variability in seed weight and tannin content on foraging behaviour of seed consumers

et al. 2015

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Summary Individual plants provide a habitat patch for foragers where the sought‐after resources (e.g. leaves, fruits and seeds) are clustered in locally dense aggregations. Characteristics of these resources often vary greatly even within individual plants, which is known as within‐plant or subindividual variation. To best describe properties of the patch (individual plants), the higher moments of trait‐value distributions must be included in addition to the mean values. However, the question whether differences in within‐plant variability of a given trait influence the foraging behaviours of consumers has been mostly untested. To test the hypothesis that differences in within‐plant variation of traits can influence the patch selection behaviour of seed consumers, we used the mean, coefficient of variation (CV) and skewness of within‐plant distributions of two Quercus serrata (Thunb) seed traits (weight and tannin content) as descriptors of plant phenotypes. We then examined the relationships between these descriptors and patch selection by the wood mouse Apodemus speciosus, where individual Quercus trees formed a foraging patch for seed removal. We collected 8594 seeds from 26 individual trees in a forest in northern Japan. We then measured their weight and tannin content, marked and returned them to the locations where they were found, and traced their fates in relation to seed removal by the wood mouse. Tannin content was nondestructively estimated using near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). There was notable within‐plant variation in seed weight and tannin content. Generalized additive modelling revealed that trees with a large mean and CV of seed weight and those with a small CV and skewness of tannin content had a high frequency of seed removal. These results highlight the importance of considering the within‐plant distribution of seed trait values, in addition to the mean trait values of individual seeds, when describing plant phenotypes. The inclusion of these data is essential to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes at work in plant–animal interactions.

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Section: W I T H I N -P L a N T V A R I A T I O N I N S E E D T R A Imentioning

confidence: 80%

Effects of within‐plant variability in seed weight and tannin content on foraging behaviour of seed consumers

et al. 2015

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“…; Patterson & Schulte‐Hostedde ). On the other hand, exploration enables chipmunks to sample ephemeral food patches (Hall, Humphries & Kramer ) and is likely to improve spatial knowledge to escape predators (Elliott ) or find mates (Bergeron et al . ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pulsed resources and the coupling between life‐history strategies and exploration patterns in eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus)

Montiglio

Garant

Bergeron

et al. 2014

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Summary1. Understanding the causes of animal personality (i.e. consistent behavioural differences) is a major aim of evolutionary studies. 2. Recent theoretical work suggests that major personality traits may contribute to evolutionary trade-offs. However, such associations have only been investigated in a few study systems, and even less so in free ranging animal populations. 3. Eastern chipmunks exhibit consistent individual differences in exploration, ranging from slow to fast. Birth cohorts also experience dramatic differences in age at first breeding opportunity due to annual differences in beech mast. Individuals may breed for the first time at 24, 33 or 50% of their average life span, depending on year of birth. Here, we used data from a long-term survey on a wild population to investigate the relationship between reproductive life history and consistent individual differences in exploration. We determined whether predictable differences in age at first breeding opportunity among birth cohorts were associated with exploration differences and favoured individuals with different exploration. 4. Birth cohorts with a predictably earlier age at first breeding opportunity were faster explorers on average. Slower explorers displayed their highest fecundity (females) or highest fertilization success (males) later in their life compared with faster explorers. Overall, slow explorers attained a higher lifetime reproductive success than fast explorers when given an opportunity to reproduce later in their life. 5. Our results suggest that the timing of mating seasons, associated with fluctuating food abundance, may favour individual variation in exploration and maintain population variation through its effects on reproductive life history. Together, our result shed light on how fluctuation in ecological conditions may maintain personality differences and on the nature of the relationships between animal personality and life history.

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“…A combination of recent and more distant memories are used to form expectations about current conditions, with more weight given to more recent information (Shettleworth and Plowright 1992;Hirvonen et al 1999). By comparing current information with these memories and expectations, foragers can detect changes in patch quality and change their behavior appropriately, neither too hastily nor too slowly (Hirvonen et al 1999;Lara 2006;Vasquez et al 2006;Hall et al 2007). Prior knowledge of patch types and their frequency in the environment can be used by animals alongside current sampling information to form an estimate/expectation of patch quality and inform, for example, decisions on when to leave a patch (e.g., McNamara 1982).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hummingbirds choose not to rely on good taste: information use during foraging

2011

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To increase their chances of survival and reproduction, animals must detect changes in food quality and then decide if, and how quickly, to adjust their behavior. How quickly an animal responds to change will depend on the information available (cognitive, sensory, or physiological) and how it weights those types of information. Surrogate measures of meal size suggest that sensory information is used to make initial choices about how much to eat following changes in resource quality, choices are subsequently altered and refined as further information becomes available. Using direct measures, we investigated the amount of food consumed, the time taken to feed, and the interbout intervals between visits to a feeder of rufous hummingbirds, before and after changes in sucrose concentration. The hummingbirds did not change how much they drank at first experience of a new concentration but then rapidly adjusted meal sizes toward optimal for that concentration over a few feeding visits. Thus, it seems the hummingbirds used both cognitive and physiological information to decide how much to drink but appeared to ignore sensory information, such as taste. The early responses animals make to changed resources enable us to determine the types of information on which they rely most in their decision making.

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Resource tracking by eastern chipmunks: the sampling of renewing patches

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

Effects of within‐plant variability in seed weight and tannin content on foraging behaviour of seed consumers

Effects of within‐plant variability in seed weight and tannin content on foraging behaviour of seed consumers

Pulsed resources and the coupling between life‐history strategies and exploration patterns in eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus)

Hummingbirds choose not to rely on good taste: information use during foraging

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