2 Models of Information Use A rufous hummingbird perches on a prominent branch and surveys a flower-covered slope. Most of the time, it waits and watches. Occasionally, it flies off its perch to probe the hanging flowers of scarlet gilia within its territory. Scarlet gilia is a classic hummingbird flower. | iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Part I Foraging and Information Processing Illllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 2 Models of Information Use David W. Stephens Prologue A rufous hummingbird perches on a prominent branch and surveys a flower-covered slope. Most of the time it waits and watches. Occasionally it flies off its perch to probe the hanging flowers of scarlet gilia within its territory. Scarlet gilia is a classic hummingbird flower. An inflorescence consists of six to twenty flowers each of which is a long scarlet tube with a pool of nectar at the base. Each inflorescence makes up a clearly defined patch in the sense of classic foraging theory even more so than most patches because it consists of discrete visitable entities . flowers. In applying the classic models of patch exploitation to this situation we naturally think of the time taken to fly between inflorescences travel time and the obvious patch depletion that a hummingbird will experience when it revisits flowers. But our hummingbird s problem isn t quite so simple. Inflorescences vary some consist of mostly empty flowers while others have mostly full flowers. Our hummingbird s own behavior partially creates this pattern but some other actors are involved as well. Robber bees move methodically from one flower to the next making neat incisions in the corolla that allow their short tongues access to the nectar. This variation means that while our hummingbird obtains food each time it probes a flower it also obtains information it finds out something .
