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- Title
Trapline foraging by bumble bees: II. Definition and detection from sequence data
- Authors
Slatkin, Montgomery; Thompson, James D.; Thomson, Barbara A.
- Abstract
Trapline foraging repeated sequential visits to a series of feedinglocations presents interesting problems seldom treated it foraging models. Work on traplining is hampered by the lack of statistical, operational approaches for detecting its existence and measuring its strength. We propose several statistical procedures, illustrating them with records of interplant flight sequences by bumble bees visiting penstemon flowers. An asymmetry test detects deviations from binomial expectation in the directionality of visits between pairs of plants. Several tests compare data from one bee to another: frequencies of visits to plants and frequencies of departures to particular destinations are compared using contingency tables; similarities of repeated sequences within bees are compared to those between bees by means of sequence alignment and Mantel tests. We also compared observed movementpatterns to those generated by null models designed to represent realistic foraging by non-traplining bees, examining temporal patterns of the bee's spatial displacement from its starting point using spectral analysis; the variance of return times to particular plants; and the sequence alignment of repeated cycles within sequences. We discussthe different indications and the relative strengths of these approaches.
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology, 1997, Vol 8, Issue 2, p199
- ISSN
1045-2249
- Publication type
Article