Time–place learning in wild, free-living hummingbirds

摘要: Animals can learn to revisit locations at which foraging resources will renew over time. This ability is known as ‘time–place’ learning. Although there clear evidence for time–place learning from animals trained and tested in the laboratory, not all species tasks with similar ease. Since hummingbirds feed food sources that are constant space time, it seems plausible these birds might associations do so readily. Here, then, we whether wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds, Selasphorus rufus , could time place four artificial flower patches were rewarded. Flowers each of contained reward only 1 h day but sequence rewarded repeated across days. Most learned when visit patch. To determine used ordinal or circadian timing choose correct patch ended experiment a single test trial presented (all flowers empty) fourth hour day. The visited neither was normally first (daily timing) nor (time day). These results suggest component requires both information.