Carry-over effects of bumblebee associative learning in changing plant communities leads to increased costs of foraging

Internicola, Antonina I.; Page, Paul; Bernasconi, Giorgina; Gigord, Luc D. B.

doi:10.1007/s11829-008-9051-6

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Given that flower foragers appear sensitive to the relative rates of encounter with rewarding and rewardless flowers [47], it is likely that in nature, they do in fact adjust their acceptance thresholds. For example, bumblebees increase their preference for a rewardless flower when a new rewarding flower becomes available and the colour of this new flower resembles the rewardless one but differs from a previously blooming rewarding flower (carry-over effects: [48]). Peak shift, a preference for more easily distinguishable signals [49], might drive foragers to prefer flowers less similar to rewardless ones and therefore to shift acceptance thresholds towards the upper range of rewarding flowers' PDF.…”

Section: (A) Floral Displays and Probability Density Functionsmentioning

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: (A) Floral Displays and Probability Density Functionsmentioning

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

“…In contrast, learning bears more severe consequences for species engaged in generalized food-deception, which exploit the instinctive expectations of opportunistic pollinators [6] for general floral signals (colour, fragrance and inflorescence shape) [7], but cannot rely on rewarding species to reinforce pollinator associations. Such deceitful species are often pollinated by either inexperienced flower visitors or experienced visitors whose preferred food source has been depleted [7,8], and they commonly experience low visitation and pollination success [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bumble-bee learning selects for both early and long flowering in food-deceptive plants

Internicola

Harder

2011

Proc. R. Soc. B.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most rewardless orchids engage in generalized food-deception, exhibiting floral traits typical of rewarding species and exploiting the instinctive foraging of pollinators. Generalized food-deceptive (GFD) orchids compete poorly with rewarding species for pollinator services, which may be overcome by flowering early in the growing season when relatively more pollinators are naive and fewer competing plant species are flowering, and/or flowering for extended periods to enhance the chance of pollinator visits. We tested these hypotheses by manipulating flowering time and duration in a natural population of Calypso bulbosa and quantifying pollinator visitation based on pollen removal. Both early and long flowering increased bumble-bee visitation compared with late and brief flowering, respectively. To identify the cause of reduced visitation during late flowering, we tested whether negative experience with C. bulbosa (avoidance learning) and positive experience with a rewarding species, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, (associative learning) by captive bumble-bees could reduce C. bulbosa's competitiveness. Avoidance learning explained the higher visitation of early-compared with late-flowering C. bulbosa. The resulting pollinator-mediated selection for early flowering may commonly affect GFD orchids, explaining their tendency to flower earlier than rewarding orchids. For dissimilar deceptive and rewarding sympatric species, associative learning may additionally favour early flowering by GFD species.

show abstract

“…This is consistent with the bumblebee behavior reported in previous experimental studies, where novel rewardless flowers were shown to be visited more frequently when rewarding flowers were depleted (Internicola et al . ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Does community‐level floral abundance affect the pollination success of a rewardless orchid, Calanthe reflexaMaxim.?

Sakata

Sakaguchi

Yamasaki

2013

Plant Species Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Decreases in pollinator abundance may particularly constrain plants that lack floral rewards, since they are poor competitors for pollinators in the plant community. Here, we documented the pollination ecology of a rewardless orchid, Calanthe reflexa Maxim., and examined effects of forest understory degradation by deer browsing on pollination success of the species in the light of a change in the abundance of neighboring flowering plants in 2010 and 2011. Bombus species were the only pollinators at each site and the flowering phenology of C. reflexa did not overlap with that of other rewarding plants.Pollinator visit rates (assessed by time-lapse photography), and pollinia removal rate were higher in the undegraded understory site than the degraded site in both years, while the fruit set ratio did not differ between the sites in 2011. Coverage by neighboring flowering plants was extremely low in the degraded site. Our results suggest that, although its flowering phenology and consequently lower interspecific competition of C. reflexa with rewarding plants for attracting bumblebees, neighboring flowering plants may play an important role for maintaining the visitation frequency of bumblebees of C. reflexa and contribute to its pollination success.

show abstract

Carry-over effects of bumblebee associative learning in changing plant communities leads to increased costs of foraging

Cited by 11 publications

References 36 publications

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

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

Bumble-bee learning selects for both early and long flowering in food-deceptive plants

Does community‐level floral abundance affect the pollination success of a rewardless orchid, Calanthe reflexaMaxim.?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About