TY - JOUR
T1 - Noisy communities and signal detection
T2 - Why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?: Signal detection in floral communities
AU - Lichtenberg, Elinor M.
AU - Heiling, Jacob M.
AU - Bronstein, Judith L.
AU - Barker, Jessica L.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s).
PY - 2020/7/6
Y1 - 2020/7/6
N2 - 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'.
AB - 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'.
KW - display trait overlap
KW - foraging
KW - pollination
KW - probability density function
KW - rewardless flowers
KW - signal detection theory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084942113&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85084942113&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2019.0486
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2019.0486
M3 - Review article
C2 - 32420846
AN - SCOPUS:85084942113
VL - 375
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
SN - 0962-8436
IS - 1802
M1 - 20190486
ER -