Dalbosco Dell'Aglio Denise, McMillan Owen W, Montgomery Stephen
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Panama City Panama.
School of Biological Science University of Bristol Bristol UK.
Ecol Evol. 2024 Jul 21;14(7):e70032. doi: 10.1002/ece3.70032. eCollection 2024 Jul.
The activity of many animals follows recurrent patterns and foraging is one of the most important processes in their daily activity. Determining movement in the search for resources and understanding temporal and spatial patterns in foraging has therefore long been central in behavioural ecology. However, identifying and monitoring animal movements is often challenging. In this study we assess the use of camera traps to track a very specific and small-scale interactions focused on the foraging behaviour of Heliconiini butterflies. Data on floral visitation was recorded using marked individuals of three pollen-feeding species of (, and ), and two closely related, non-pollen feeding species ( and ) in a large outdoor insectary. We demonstrate that camera traps efficiently capture individual flower visitation over multiple times and locations and use our experiments to describe some features of their spatial and temporal foraging patterns. Heliconiini butterflies showed higher activity in the morning with strong temporal niche overlap. Differences in foraging activity between males and females was observed with females foraging earlier than males, mirroring published field studies. Some flowers were more explored than others, which may be explained by butterflies foraging simultaneously affecting each other's flower choices. Feeding was grouped in short periods of intense visits to the same flower, which we refer to as feeding bouts. also consistently visits the same flower, while non- visited a greater number of flowers per day and their feeding bouts were shorter compared with . This is consistent with having more stable long-term spatial memory and foraging preferences than outgroup genera. More broadly, our study demonstrates that camera traps can provide a powerful tool to gather information about foraging behaviour in small insects such as butterflies. © 2024 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
许多动物的活动遵循周期性模式，觅食是它们日常活动中最重要的过程之一。因此，确定寻找资源时的移动以及理解觅食中的时空模式长期以来一直是行为生态学的核心内容。然而，识别和监测动物的移动往往具有挑战性。在本研究中，我们评估了使用相机陷阱来追踪一种非常特定且小规模的相互作用，该相互作用聚焦于赫利孔亚族蝴蝶的觅食行为。在一个大型户外昆虫饲养场中，使用三种花粉取食种类（ 、 和 ）以及两种密切相关的非花粉取食种类（ 和 ）的标记个体记录了访花数据。我们证明相机陷阱能够在多个时间和地点有效地捕捉个体对花朵的访问，并利用我们的实验描述了它们时空觅食模式的一些特征。赫利孔亚族蝴蝶在早晨表现出更高的活动水平，且时间生态位重叠强烈。观察到雄性和雌性在觅食活动上存在差异，雌性比雄性更早觅食，这与已发表的野外研究结果一致。有些花朵比其他花朵被探索得更多，这可能是因为蝴蝶同时觅食会相互影响彼此的花朵选择。取食集中在对同一朵花的短时间密集访问中，我们将其称为取食回合。 也始终访问同一朵花，而 每天访问的花朵数量更多，并且与 相比其取食回合更短。这与 比外类群属具有更稳定的长期空间记忆和觅食偏好是一致的。更广泛地说，我们的研究表明相机陷阱可以提供一个强大的工具来收集有关蝴蝶等小型昆虫觅食行为的信息。© 2024作者。《生态与进化》由约翰·威利父子有限公司出版
