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Citation

Hornsby MAW, Hurly TA, Hamilton CE, Pritchard DJ & Healy SD (2014) Wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds do not use geometric cues in a spatial task. Behavioural Processes, 108, pp. 138-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.10.003

Abstract
In the laboratory, many species orient themselves using the geometric properties of an enclosure or array and geometric information is often preferred over visual cues. Whether animals use geometric cues when relocating rewarded locations in the wild, however, has rarely been investigated. We presented free-living rufous hummingbirds with a rectangular array of four arti?cial ?owers to investigate learning of rewarded locations using geometric cues. In one treatment, we rewarded two of four ?owers at diagonally opposite corners. In a second treatment, we provided a visual cue to the rewarded ?ower by connecting the ?owers with “walls” consisting of four dowels (three white, one blue) laid on the ground connecting each of the ?owers. Neither treatment elicited classical geometry results; instead, hummingbirds typically chose one particular ?ower over all others. When we exchanged that ?ower with another, hummingbirds tended to visit the original ?ower. These results suggest that (1) hummingbirds did not use geometric cues, but instead may have used a visually derived cue on the ?owers themselves, and (2) using geometric cues may have been more dif?cult than using visual characteristics. Although hummingbirds typically prefer spatial over visual information, we hypothesize that they will not use geometric cues over stable visual features but that they make use of small, ?ower-speci?c visual cues. Such cues may play a more important role in foraging decisions than previously thought.

Keywords
Geometry; Selasphorus rufus; Visual features; Spatial orientation; Navigation

Journal
Behavioural Processes: Volume 108