In ecology and ecological behavior, trap-lining or traplining is a feeding strategy in which a person visits a food source on a regular, repetitive sequence, such as trappers checking their line of traps. Traplining is usually seen in species foraging for flower resources. It involves a particular route in which individuals traverse in the same sequence repeatedly to inspect certain plants for flowers that hold the nectar, even for long distances. Trap-lining has been described in several taxa (sing.axax), including bees, butterflies, tamarins, bats, rats, and hummingbirds and tropical fruit-eating mammals such as opossum, capuchins and kinkajous. Traplining is used for the term method in which bees and hummingbirds go about collecting nectar, and consequently, pollinating every plant they visit. The term "trapling" was originally created by Daniel Janzen, although this concept was discussed by Charles Darwin and Nikolaas Tinbergen.
Video Trap-lining
Respons perilaku
In the example of hummingbirds and beetles, traplining is an evolutionary response to resource allocation among species. In particular, individual hummingbirds form their own specific routes to minimize competition and maximize the availability of nutrients. Some hummingbird species are territorial (eg rufus hummingbirds, Selasphorus rufus ,) and retain certain territories, while others are trapliners (ie, Long-billed hermits, Phaethornis longirostris ) and constantly check different locations for food. Because of this, the territorial hummingbirds will become stronger, while hummingbird traps have longer wing-like adaptations to fly more efficiently. Traplining hummingbirds will move from source to source, obtaining nectar from each. Over time, a hummingbird will become a primary visitor to a particular source. In the case of bees, when a competitor is removed, there is an inflow to the removal area and less time spent trapping long distances. It shows the ability to adjust behavior based on the competition around it. In addition, bees use trap traps to distinguish between high-yielding nectar flowers and low-yielding nectar flowers by consistently recognizing and visiting higher-yielding flowers. Other types of bees, such as with euglossine bees (ie Euglossa imperialis ) use traplining to search for food efficiently by flying quickly from one flowering plant right to the next in a regulated set, even ignoring new plants the adjacent blooms, but outside, of the daily route. By doing so, the euglossine bee significantly reduces the amount of time and energy spent on finding nectar every day. In general, it appears that species traps have higher nutritional rewards than non-trapping species.
Maps Trap-lining
Energy conservation
Traplining hummingbirds are known to be proportionally active for the production of nectar in flowers, declining throughout the day. Therefore, trapping the hummingbirds can spend less time looking for food, and gain their energy intake of some amount of interest. Spending less time looking for food means less energy spent on flying and searching. Traplining bumblebees prioritize their routes based on trip distance and prize amount. It appears that the total trap distance is related to the abundance of reward (nectar) in the environment.
Spatial cognition and memory
Traplining can also be an indication of the extent of spatial cognition of species using this technique. For example, traplining in bees is an indication that the bees have spatial reference memory, or spatial memory, which is used to create certain routes in short-term foraging. The ability to remember certain routes reduces long-term feeding and flying times, consequently saving energy. This theory has been tested, showing that bumblebee can remember the shortest route to a gift, even when the original pathway has been altered or blocked. In addition, the bees reduce the amount of time spent visiting sites with little or no nutritional rewards. Bees with access to short-term memory only inefficiently.
Benefits
One of the main advantages of the trap is that routes can be taught to other members of the population quickly or over an hour, leading all members to a reliable food source. When groups work together to find specific food sources, they can quickly determine where and get route information that is transferred to all individuals in the population. This ensures that the whole community can quickly find and consume the needed nutrients.
Traplining helps the forager compete for resources that fill in a way slows down. For example, plant nectar is slowly replaced over time, while seeds occur only once a year. Traplining can help plant diversity and evolution by keeping pollen with different genetics flowing from plant to plant. Most pollinators use traps as a way of ensuring they always know where the food source they are looking for. This means that organisms such as bees and hummingbirds can transfer pollen anywhere from the starting point of the route to the last food source along the way. Because the path is always the same, it greatly reduces the risk of self-pollination (iterogami) because pollinators will not return to the same interest at certain feeding sessions.
Overall, the plant species visited by the trapliner have enhanced evolutionary fitness and advantages. Because of the mutualistic relationship between trapping hummingbirds and plants, hummingbird traps have been referred to as "legit pollinators", while territorial hummingbirds have been referred to as "nectar thieves". If an organism that traps the place where the food source once, they can always return to the source of the food because they can remember the small details about the location of the source. This allows them to adapt quickly if one of the main sources suddenly becomes scarce or crumbling.
Disadvantages
Serious obstacles, such as plant life arrangements, can inhibit traplining. If the zig zags route through the understory of the tropical rainforest, some of the organisms using the route can get lost due to very subtle changes, such as tree cliffs or heavy rain. This can cause someone to be separated from the entire group if they can not find the path back to the original route. Some food sources can be ignored because the trap routes used do not direct the organism to the area where these resources are located.
Because the route is very specific, the organism that follows it may also miss the opportunity to get in touch with a potential partner. Male buffaloes that go straight to the food source have been observed to skip the female bumblebee as a potential mate who is on the same path, preferring to continue to feed and bring food back to the nest. This could take away from the diversification of species and might be able to remove some properties in the pool of useful genes.
Research
Observing traps in the natural world has proved very difficult and little is known about how and why species traps, but studies of traps in the natural environment occur. In one particular study, individual bees trained on five artificial flowers with the same reward were observed caught between the five flowers. As new flowers of higher prizes will be included in the group, the bees then adjust their traps to include higher gift flowers. Under natural conditions they hypothesized that it might be beneficial for bees to prioritize higher gift flowers to beat competition or conserve energy.
In other field experiments, ecologists created a "competition vacuum" to observe whether bumblebees adjust their feeding routes based on intense direct competition between other bees. This study shows that bees in higher competitive areas are more productive than control bees. Bumblebee is opportunistically adjusting the use of its trap route in response to other competing bee activities. Another effective way to learn the behavior of trap species is through computer simulations and indoor cage experiments. A simulation model can be made to show the linkage between the pollinator movement and the pollen stream. This model considers how services by polliners with different diets will affect pollen flow.
The flight cage experiment allows for easier determination between test subjects and easier behavioral and behavioral observations. Bees in small study environments seem to show less tricky tendencies than bees studied in environments that span several hectares. Larger work areas increase the need for traplining techniques to further conserve energy and maximize nutritional intake and bee most often trap due to tight travel distances. Bees remember this complex flight path by breaking it into small segments using vectors, landmarks and other environmental factors, each pointing to the next destination.
Despite the long history of research on learning and navigation of bees, much of the knowledge has been inferred from the behavior of travel collectors between their nests and single feeding locations. Recently, the study of bee-feeding bees in artificial flower arrangements equipped with an automated tracking system has begun to illustrate the learning mechanism behind the complex route formation among multiple locations. Demonstration that all these observations can be accurately replicated by a single heuristic learning model holds great promises to further investigate these questions and fill a large gap in cognitive ecology.
See also
- Optimal search theory
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments