Sampling and tracking a changing environment: persistence and reward in the foraging decisions of bumblebees

Dunlap, Aimee S.; Papaj, Daniel R.; Dornhaus, Anna

doi:10.1098/rsfs.2016.0149

Cited by 26 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 75 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, when floral displays are highly heterogeneous, carry-over effects (a preference for signals similar to known rewarding ones) may keep visitors foraging on flowers that resemble rewarding ones [45], as mentioned in §3a. Additionally, foragers' attempts to adjust acceptance thresholds in response to frequent changes in PDF overlap could inflict high learning costs, or require extra assessment to make adaptive choices [64]. These learning and assessment costs could prevent flower foragers from adjusting acceptance thresholds.…”

Section: (I) Floral Resource Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Noisy communities and signal detection: why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?

Lichtenberg

Heiling

Bronstein

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Floral communities present complex and shifting resource landscapes for flower-foraging animals. Strong similarities among the floral displays of different plant species, paired with high variability in reward distributions across time and space, can weaken correlations between floral signals and reward status. As a result, it should be difficult for foragers to discriminate between rewarding and rewardless flowers. Building on signal detection theory in behavioural ecology, we use hypothetical probability density functions to examine graphically how plant signals pose challenges to forager decision-making. We argue that foraging costs associated with incorrect acceptance of rewardless flowers and incorrect rejection of rewarding ones interact with community-level reward availability to determine the extent to which rewardless and rewarding species should overlap in flowering time. We discuss the evolutionary consequences of these phenomena from both the forager and the plant perspectives. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Signal detection theory in recognition systems: from evolving models to experimental tests’.

show abstract

Section: (I) Floral Resource Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Noisy communities and signal detection: why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?

Lichtenberg

Heiling

Bronstein

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hildesheim et al 2019;Kalisz & Vogler 2003;Moreira-Hernandez & Muchhala;Opedal et al 2016) and studies have examined how reliability of floral rewards affects pollinator behavior (e.g. Austin et al 2019;Dunlap et al 2017); however, how stochasticity in the presence of pollinators affects floral evolution and the delineation of pollination systems remains a largely understudied topic. Future studies testing the pollination syndrome concept should utilize plant-pollinator data with broad spatiotemporal coverage when defining primary pollinators and consider how pollinator reliability across time and space may influence the interpretation of pollination syndromes (or the lack thereof) in their focal species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Pollination Syndromes in <i>Oenothera</i> (Onagraceae)

Krakos

Austin

2021

J Poll Ecol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Pollinators are considered a major selective force in shaping the diversification of angiosperms. It has been hypothesized that convergent evolution of floral form has resulted in “pollination syndromes” - i.e. suites of floral traits that correspond to attraction of particular pollinator functional groups. Across the literature, the pollination syndrome concept has received mixed support. This may be due to studies using different methods to describe floral traits and/or the pollination syndrome concept being supported more often in species highly reliant on pollinators for reproduction. Here, we assess the predictive ability of pollination syndromes in Oenothera, a species rich clade with pollination systems existing on a gradient of specialization, and in which species are either self-compatible or self-incompatible. We ask the following questions: Do Oenothera species follow the pollination syndrome concept using traditional, categorical floral trait descriptions and/or quantitative floral trait measurements? And, are floral traits more predictive of primary pollinators in species with specialized pollination systems and/or species that are self-incompatible? Mapping floral traits of 54 Oenothera species into morphospace, we do not find support for the pollination syndrome concept using either categorical or quantitative floral trait descriptions. We do not find support for specialization or breeding system influencing the prediction of primary pollinators. However, we find pollination syndromes were more predictive in Oenothera species with moth pollination systems. Collectively, these results suggest that the pollination syndrome concept cannot be generally applied across taxa and that evolutionary history is important to consider when evaluating the relationship between floral form and contemporary pollinators.

show abstract

“…The majority of studies on nectarivores have been carried out on bees. Results have, however, been unclear, possibly due to the previously described binomial interpretation of risk (Shafir 2000;Weber et al 2004): bees have been observed to be risk-indifferent (Banschbach and Waddington 1994;Perez and Waddington 1996;Fülöp and Menzel 2000), risk-averse (Waddington et al 1981;Shapiro 2000), to follow the budget rule (Cartar and Dill 1990;Cartar 1991), or a mixture of those depending on risk variability (Shafir et al 1999;Shafir 2000;Mayack and Naug 2011;Dunlap et al 2017). Bees and other eusocial insects represent a special case for risk sensitivity.…”

Section: Ants As a Model For Risk Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Irrational risk aversion in an ant

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Animals must often decide between exploiting safe options or risky options with a chance for large gains. Both proximate theories based on perceptual mechanisms, and evolutionary ones based on fitness benefits, have been proposed to explain decisions under risk. Eusocial insects represent a special case of risk sensitivity, as they must often make collective decisions based on resource evaluations from many individuals. Previously, colonies of the ant Lasius niger were found to be risk-neutral, but the risk preference of individual foragers was unknown. Here, we tested individual L. niger in a risk sensitivity paradigm. Ants were trained to associate one scent with 0.55 M sucrose solution and another with an equal chance of either 0.1 or 1.0 M sucrose. Preference was tested in a Y-maze. Ants were extremely risk-averse, with 91% choosing the safe option. Based on the psychophysical Weber–Fechner law, we predicted that ants evaluate resources depending on their logarithmic difference. To test this hypothesis, we designed 4 more experiments by varying the relative differences between the alternatives, making the risky option less, equally or more valuable than the safe one. Our results support the logarithmic origin of risk aversion in ants, and demonstrate that the behaviour of individual foragers can be a very poor predictor of colony-level behaviour.

show abstract

Sampling and tracking a changing environment: persistence and reward in the foraging decisions of bumblebees

Cited by 26 publications

References 75 publications

Noisy communities and signal detection: why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?

Noisy communities and signal detection: why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?

Testing Pollination Syndromes in <i>Oenothera</i> (Onagraceae)

Irrational risk aversion in an ant

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About