Pollinator foraging strategies in mixed floral arrays: Density effects and floral constancy (Q1914190)

We present a greatly simplified model of pollinator foraging in a mixed floral array and explore its dynamic consequences. We then progressively relax a few of the most restrictive assumptions of our initial model in more complex (and less tractable) versions of the model, and we demonstrate many of the same properties and a few new ones. We will also briefly discuss a computer simulation reported in the first author's Ph.D. thesis [Univ. Washington (1991)] in which several more complications were introduced, again with little effect on the behavior of the model. Finally, we will discuss some of the predictions of behavioral game models like those presented here for explaining the behavior of pollinators and other foragers, as well as the possible implications for understanding the pollination biology of plants as a function of their population density.