The DOI matches its Crossref record; 27 of the 27 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Flower Constancy: Definition, Cause, and Measurement
Abstract
A pollinator that restricts its visits to one flower type, even when other rewarding types are accessible, can be said to exhibit flower constancy. This usage distinguishes constancy from fixed preference or labile preference for the most rewarding flower type; I discuss a quantitative constancy index that is insensitive to preference changes. Because a constant visitor avoids flowers with acceptable rewards, the behavior is inefficient unless there are constraints such as an inability to learn quickly or to remember simultaneously how to deal with many flower types. If such constraints are the basis for constancy, it should be most pronounced when flowers in a mixture differ strongly in morphology or color. I observed bees foraging in outdoor flower arrays and found that constancy always increased with increasing differences among flower types; similar results can be gleaned from one other study. The available experimental evidence thus suggests that constancy reflects behavioral constraints.
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Cites
On Optimal Use of a Patchy Environment
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The Estimation and Analysis of Preference and Its Relatioship to Foraging Models
Chesson, J. (1983) · Ecology · doi:10.2307/1937838 · Cited by 975
Foraging behavior: ecological, ethological, and psychological approaches
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On the Methods of Measuring Association Between Two Attributes
Yule, G. U. (1912) · Journal of the Royal Statistical Society · doi:10.2307/2340126 · Cited by 744
Learning and memory in the honeybee
Hammer, M., & Menzel, R. (1995) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.15-03-01617.1995 · Cited by 733
The Foraging Specializations of Individual Bumblebees
Heinrich, B. (1976) · Ecological Monographs · doi:10.2307/1942246 · Cited by 604
POLLINATION SYSTEMS AS ISOLATING MECHANISMS IN ANGIOSPERMS
Grant, V. (1949) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1949.tb00007.x · Cited by 541
The Mechanism of Competition for Pollination between Two Forest Herbs
Campbell, D. R., & Motten, A. F. (1985) · Ecology · doi:10.2307/1940404 · Cited by 288
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Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence, and Function
Burkle, L. A., Marlin, J. C., & Knight, T. M. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1232728 · Cited by 1,118
Review: Ecological networks – beyond food webs
Ings, T. C., Montoya, J. M., Bascompte, J., Blüthgen, N., Brown, L., Dormann, C. F., Edwards, F., Figueroa, D., Jacob, U., Jones, J. I., et al. (2009) · Journal of Animal Ecology · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01460.x · Cited by 934
Nature-inspired optimization algorithms: Challenges and open problems
Yang, X.-S. (2020) · Journal of Computational Science · doi:10.1016/j.jocs.2020.101104 · Cited by 429
Gumbert, A. (2000) · Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · doi:10.1007/s002650000213 · Cited by 384
Synergy between visual and olfactory cues in nectar feeding by naı̈ve hawkmoths, Manduca sexta
Raguso, R. A., & Willis, M. A. (2002) · Animal Behaviour · doi:10.1006/anbe.2002.4010 · Cited by 384
Metadata
- Authors
- Waser, N. M.
- Venue
- The American Naturalist
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1986-05
- Volume
- 127
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 593-603
- ISSN
- 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5323
- OpenAlex
- W2000259947
- Cited by
- 623
- References
- 27
- FWCI
- 7.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
