St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Register / Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Numerical ordinality in a wild nectarivore

Thumbnail
View/Open
Vamos_2020_PRSB_Numerical_AAM.pdf (1.012Mb)
Date
08/07/2020
Author
Vámos, Tas I.F.
Tello-Ramos, Maria C.
Hurly, T. Andrew
Healy, Susan D.
Keywords
Counting
Foraging
Hummingbird
Nectarivore
Numerical ordinality
Traplining
QH301 Biology
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Immunology and Microbiology(all)
Environmental Science(all)
Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
DAS
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
Ordinality is a numerical property that nectarivores may use to remember the specific order in which to visit a sequence of flowers, a foraging strategy also known as traplining. In this experiment, we tested whether wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) could use ordinality to visit a rewarded flower. Birds were presented with a series of linear arrays of 10 artificial flowers; only one flower in each array was rewarded with sucrose solution. During training, birds learned to locate the correct flower independent of absolute spatial location. The birds' accuracy was independent of the rewarded ordinal position (1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th), which suggests that they used an object-indexing mechanism of numerical processing, rather than a magnitude-based system. When distance cues between flowers were made irrelevant during test trials, birds could still locate the correct flower. The distribution of errors during both training and testing indicates that the birds may have used a so-called working up strategy to locate the correct ordinal position. These results provide the first demonstration of numerical ordinal abilities in a wild vertebrate and suggest that such abilities could be used during foraging in the wild.
Citation
Vámos , T I F , Tello-Ramos , M C , Hurly , T A & Healy , S D 2020 , ' Numerical ordinality in a wild nectarivore ' , Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , vol. 287 , no. 1930 , 20201269 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1269
Publication
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1269
ISSN
0962-8452
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1269
Description
This work was supported by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (S.D.H.), the University of Lethbridge, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN 121496-2003; T.A.H.)
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/suppl/10.1098/rspb.2020.1269
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/20623

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter