ArticleRoyal Society open science2017
Colour as a backup for scent in the presence of olfactory noise: testing the efficacy backup hypothesis using bumblebees (
Article in Royal Society open science, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploring the importance of aromatic plants' extrafloral volatiles for pollinator attraction.The New phytologist · 2025Review
- Extreme events induced by climate change alter nectar offer to pollinators in cross pollination-dependent crops.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Variations of floral temperature in changing weather conditions.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The behavioural responses of bumblebeesRoyal Society open science · 2024Article
- A whole ecosystem approach to pear psyllid (Journal of pest science · 2024Review
- Floral volatiles evoke partially similar responses in both florivores and pollinators and are correlated with non-volatile reward chemicals.Annals of botany · 2023Review
- Contrasting effects of fungicide and herbicide active ingredients and their formulations on bumblebee learning and behaviour.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- The Ability of Bumblebees Bombus terrestris (Hymenoptera: Apidae) to Detect Floral Humidity is Dependent Upon Environmental Humidity.Environmental entomology · 2022Article
- Flower sharing and pollinator health: a behavioural perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Article
- Bumblebees can detect floral humidity.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Phylogenetic signal in floral temperature patterns.BMC research notes · 2021Article
- Multimodal interactions in insect navigation.Animal cognition · 2020Review
- Floral temperature patterns can function as floral guides.Arthropod-plant interactions · 2020Article
- Floral Humidity in Flowering Plants: A Preliminary Survey.Frontiers in plant science · 2020Article
- Modality-specific impairment of learning by a neonicotinoid pesticide.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Deceptive strategy in Dactylorhiza orchids: multidirectional evolution of floral chemistry.Annals of botany · 2019Article
- Cross-modal transfer in visual and nonvisual cues in bumblebees.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Article
- Floral plasticity: Herbivore-species-specific-induced changes in flower traits with contrasting effects on pollinator visitation.Plant, cell & environment · 2019Article
- A neonicotinoid pesticide impairs foraging, but not learning, in free-flying bumblebees.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The majority of floral displays simultaneously broadcast signals from multiple sensory modalities, but these multimodal displays come at both a metabolic cost and an increased conspicuousness to floral antagonists. Why then do plants invest in these costly multimodal displays? The efficacy backup hypothesis suggests that individual signal components act as a backup for others in the presence of environmental variability. Here, we test the efficacy backup hypothesis by investigating the ability of bumblebees to differentiate between sets of artificial flowers in the presence of either chemical interference or high wind speeds, both of which have the potential to impede the transmission of olfactory signals. We found that both chemical interference and high wind speeds negatively affected forager learning times, but these effects were mitigated in the presence of a visual signal component. Our results suggest that visual signals can act as a backup for olfactory signals in the presence of chemical interference and high wind speeds, and support the efficacy backup hypothesis as an explanation for the evolution of multimodal floral displays.
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Registered trials
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