A comparison of distances flown by different visitors to flowers of the same species.

Abstract

The morphologically complex flowers of Delphinium nelsonii, D. barbeyi, and Ipomopsis aggregata are visited by a wide variety of animals. Visitors to each species range from small insects, such as worker bumblebees and solitary bees, to hummingbirds, and thus span roughly an order of magnitude in body mass and metabolic rate while flying; they also differ in type of food collected and in their efficacy as pollinators. Despite these differences, all the visitors to a given plant species fly similar, short distances between successively visited flowers and plants. There are no significant relationships between mean flight distance and metabolic rate or body mass among the visitors to any plant species. Thus there is no evidence that flight characteristics depend on anything as straightforward as whether flower visitors have high or low energetic requirements.