From a sequential pattern, temporal adjustments emerge in hummingbird traplining
Abstract
Animals that feed from resources that are constant in space and that refill may benefit from repeating the order in which they visit locations. This is a behavior known as traplining, a spatial phenomenon. Hummingbirds, like other central‐place foragers, use short traplines when moving between several rewarding sites. Here we investigated whether traplining hummingbirds also use relevant temporal information when choosing which flowers to visit. Wild rufous hummingbirds that were allowed to visit 3 artificial flower patches in which flowers were refilled 20 min after they had been depleted repeated the order in which they visited the 3 patches. Although they tended to visit the first 2 patches sooner than 20 min, they visited the third patch at approximately 20‐min intervals. The time between visits to the patches increased across the experiment, suggesting that the birds learned to wait longer before visiting a patch. The birds appeared to couple the sequential pattern of a trapline with temporal regularity, to some degree. This suggests that there is a temporal component to the repeated spatial movements flown by foraging wild hummingbirds.
Citation
Tello-Ramos , M C , Hurly , T A & Healy , S D 2019 , ' From a sequential pattern, temporal adjustments emerge in hummingbird traplining ' , Integrative Zoology , vol. 14 , no. 2 , pp. 182-192 . https://doi.org/10.1111/1749-4877.12370
Publication
Integrative Zoology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1749-4877Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 International Society of Zoological Sciences, Institute of Zoology/Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher's policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1749-4877.12370
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