How pollinator movement patterns emerge from the interaction between cognition and the environment

Abstract

Nectar-feeding insects, birds and mammals develop complex foraging patterns, such as repetitive multi-destination routes known as 'traplines'. While this behaviour likely influences animals' foraging success and plant mating patterns, its drivers and prevalence across species and environments remain poorly understood. Through a systematic literature review, we show that pollinators display varying degrees of movement repetitiveness. Then, using a cognitively realistic agent-based model that we parametrized with data from bee foraging studies, we demonstrate how the interplay between cognition, competition, resource distribution and nectar renewal rate can generate various foraging patterns. Our model predicts greater movement repetitiveness when floral resources are scarce and spread in space, nectar renews quickly and competition is low. These findings challenge assumptions about the prevalence of strict traplining in behavioural studies and random pollinator movements in pollination models. We discuss how a deeper understanding of the diversity of pollinator movements can improve predictions of plant mating patterns to inform precision agriculture and conservation efforts.