Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) in Florida

The Auk ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-187

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Healy ◽  
William A. Calder




2012 ◽  
Vol 154 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Moran ◽  
Leonard I. Wassenaar ◽  
J. Cam Finlay ◽  
Cathie Hutcheson ◽  
Leigh Ann Isaac ◽  
...  


2000 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara M. Hiebert ◽  
Katrina G. Salvante ◽  
Marilyn Ramenofsky ◽  
John C. Wingfield


1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Calder


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Healy ◽  
William A. Calder


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e6596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison J. Moran ◽  
Sean W.J. Prosser ◽  
Jonathan A. Moran

Hummingbirds consume sugars from nectar, sap and honeydew, and obtain protein, fat and minerals from arthropods. To date, the identity of arthropod taxa in hummingbird diets has been investigated by observation of foraging or examination of alimentary tract contents. Direct examination of nestling provisioning adds the extra complication of disturbance to the young and mother. Here, we show that arthropod food items provisioned to Rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) nestlings can be identified by a safe and non-invasive protocol using next-generation sequencing (NGS) of DNA from nestling fecal pellets collected post-fledging. We found that females on southern Vancouver Island (British Columbia, Canada) provisioned nestlings with a wide range of arthropod taxa. The samples examined contained three Classes, eight Orders, 48 Families, and 87 Genera, with from one to 15 Families being identified in a single pellet. Soft-bodied Dipterans were found most frequently and had the highest relative abundance; hard-bodied prey items were absent from almost all samples. Substantial differences in taxa were found within season and between years, indicating the importance of multi-year sampling when defining a prey spectrum.



Author(s):  
Mia Corliss ◽  
Theo Brown ◽  
T. Andrew Hurly ◽  
Susan D. Healy ◽  
Maria C. Tello-Ramos

AbstractWhen presented with resources that differ in quantity, many animals use a numerosity system to discriminate between them. One taxonomically widespread system is the approximate number system. This is a numerosity system that allows the rapid evaluation of the number of objects in a group and which is regulated by Weber’s Law. Here we investigated whether wild, free-living rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) possess an approximate number system. The hummingbirds were presented with two experiments. In the first we investigated whether hummingbirds spontaneously chose an array containing more flowers than an alternate array. In the second we asked whether the hummingbirds could learn to use numerosity as a cue to which of two arrays contained the better reward. The birds did not spontaneously prefer an array containing more flowers. After minimal training, however, they learned to choose the more numerous array and could differentiate between arrays of five and seven flowers. These data support the presence of an approximate number system in the rufous hummingbird. It seems plausible that having such a system would enable much more efficient foraging in this species.



2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Healy ◽  
William A. Calder


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document