ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Noisy communities and signal detection: why do foragers visit rewardless flowers?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bee pollination services and the burden of biogeography.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Signal detection, acceptance thresholds and the evolution of animal recognition systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Changing How Biologists View Flowers-Color as a Perception Not a Trait.Frontiers in plant science · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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'.
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Registered trials
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