Wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds do not use geometric cues in a spatial task

Hornsby, Mark A. W.; Hurly, T. Andrew; Hamilton, Caitlin E.; Pritchard, D J; Healy, Susan D.

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2014.10.003

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…13: 20170610 the shape of an array of feeders, or, how animals use 'landmarks', which are usually discrete objects with a constant relationship to the goal [49]. Although early studies of how hummingbirds remembered space were heavily influenced by these laboratory studies of landmarks and geometry, hummingbirds did not use the 'geometry' of an array of flowers or landmarks [50][51][52], except under very particular conditions [53]. Similarly, hummingbirds can use multiple landmarks to identify flower locations [50,52], but do so only under very particular conditions [54].…”

Section: Case Study 2: View-based Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treating hummingbirds as feathered bees: a case of ethological cross-pollination

et al. 2017

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Hummingbirds feed from hundreds of flowers every day. The properties of these flowers provide these birds with a wealth of information about colour, space and time to guide how they forage. To understand how hummingbirds might use this information, researchers have adapted established laboratory paradigms for use in the field. In recent years, however, experimental inspiration has come less from other birds, and more from looking at other nectar-feeders, particularly honeybees and bumblebees, which have been models for foraging behaviour and cognition for over a century. In a world in which the cognitive abilities of bees regularly make the news, research on the influence of ecology and sensory systems on bee behaviour is leading to novel insights in hummingbird cognition. As methods designed to study insects in the laboratory are being applied to hummingbirds in the field, converging methods can help us identify and understand convergence in cognition, behaviour and ecology.

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Section: Case Study 2: View-based Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treating hummingbirds as feathered bees: a case of ethological cross-pollination

et al. 2017

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“…Rufous hummingbirds will learn the locations of rewarded flowers using a variety of cues, alone or together, including a conspicuous nearby landmark , flowers within the same array when they are 40 cm or closer (Hurly and Healy 1998) and (to the human eye) inconspicuous visual features of the flower itself (Hornsby et al 2014). They will also encode views of the panorama surrounding the flower (Pritchard et al 2015(Pritchard et al , 2016 and perhaps local, natural landmarks (e.g., small bushes, ground squirrel holes; Nardi et al 2015, Hurly et al 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After every fourth bout, we exchanged all flowers and stakes for four new flowers and stakes. This was done to prevent the birds learning that they could use minute visual features of each flower or stake to locate the reward (Hornsby et al 2014). The position of the array as a whole remained stationary and did not change until we presented the birds with a test.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because re-trapping and then physically disorienting the hummingbirds was not practical, we disoriented the hummingbirds indirectly by using translocation and rotation of the array to dissociate the array from other visual cues in the local environment (Hornsby et al 2014). We then exchanged all of the stakes and flowers for new stakes and flowers and filled all of the new flowers with water.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, when specifically tested for the use of geometric information, in a field analogue of laboratory tests, the hummingbirds did not make the characteristic pattern of correct choices and geometric errors. Rather, they relied on experimental and/or natural landmarks or on small, floral-specific visual features (Hornsby et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wild hummingbirds can use the geometry of a flower array

Hornsby

Healy

Hurly

2017

Behavioural Processes

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Highlights:1) We trained birds to find a rewarded flower in a four-flower array 2) After rotation and translocation of the array, hummingbirds used geometric cues to choose a flower 3) Geometry is more than a robust laboratory artefact, but more research is required AbstractAnimals use cues from their environment to orient in space and to navigate their surroundings.Geometry is a cue whose informational content may originate from the metric properties of a given environment, and its use has been demonstrated in the laboratory in nearly every species of animal tested. However, it is not clear whether geometric information, used by animals typically tested in small, rectangular boxes, is directly relevant to animals in their natural environment.Here we present the first data that confirm the use of geometric cues by a free-living animal in the wild. We trained rufous hummingbirds to visit a rectangular array of four artificial flowers, one of which was rewarded. In some trials a conspicuous landmark cued the reward. Following array translocation and rotation, we presented hummingbirds with three tests. When trained and tested with the landmark, or when trained and tested without it, hummingbirds failed to show geometric learning. However, when trained with a landmark but tested without it, hummingbirds produced the classic geometric response, showing that they had learned the geometric relationships (distance and direction) of several non-reward visual elements of the environment.While it remains that the use of geometry to relocate a reward may be an experimental artefact, it is one cue that is not confined to the laboratory.

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Sex differences in the use of spatial cues in two avian brood parasites

2020

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Shiny and screaming cowbirds are avian interspecific brood parasites that locate and prospect host nests in daylight and return from one to several days later to lay an egg during the pre-dawn twilight. Thus, during nest location and prospecting, both location information and visual features are available, but the latter become less salient in the low-light conditions when the nests are visited for laying. This raises the question of how these different sources of information interact, and whether this reflects different behavioural specializations across sexes. Differences are expected, because in shiny cowbirds, females act alone, but in screaming cowbirds, both sexes make exploratory and laying nest visits together. We trained females and males of shiny and screaming cowbird to locate a food source signalled by both colour and position (cues associated), and evaluated performance after displacing the colour cue to make it misleading (cues dissociated). There were no sex or species differences in acquisition performance while the cues were associated. When the colour cue was relocated, individuals of both sexes and species located the food source making fewer visits to non-baited wells than expected by chance, indicating that they all retained the position as an informative cue. In this phase, however, shiny cowbird females, but not screaming, outperformed conspecific males, visiting fewer non-baited wells before finding the food location and making straighter paths in the search. These results are consistent with a greater reliance on spatial memory, as expected from the shiny cowbird female's specialization on nest location behaviour.

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Wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds do not use geometric cues in a spatial task

Cited by 11 publications

References 25 publications

Treating hummingbirds as feathered bees: a case of ethological cross-pollination

Treating hummingbirds as feathered bees: a case of ethological cross-pollination

Wild hummingbirds can use the geometry of a flower array

Sex differences in the use of spatial cues in two avian brood parasites

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