Marisol Amaya-Márquez

Honey Bee Location- and Time-Linked Memory Use in Novel Foraging Situations: Floral Color Dependency

Learning facilitates behavioral plasticity, leading to higher success rates when foraging. However, memory is of decreasing value with changes brought about by moving to novel resource locations or activity at different times of the day. These premises suggest a foraging model with location- and time-linked memory. Thus, each problem is novel, and selection should favor a maximum likelihood approach to achieve energy maximization results. Alternatively, information is potentially always applicable. This premise suggests a different foraging model, one where initial decisions should be based on previous learning regardless of the foraging site or time. Under this second model, no problem is considered novel, and selection should favor a Bayesian or pseudo-Bayesian approach to achieve energy maximization results. We tested these two models by offering honey bees a learning situation at one location in the morning, where nectar rewards differed between flower colors, and examined their behavior at a second location in the afternoon where rewards did not differ between flower colors. Both blue-yellow and blue-white dimorphic flower patches were used. Information learned in the morning was clearly used in the afternoon at a new foraging site. Memory was not location-time restricted in terms of use when visiting either flower color dimorphism.

Resolving incongruence: Species of hybrid origin in Columnea (Gesneriaceae)

Speciation by hybridization has long been recognized among plants and includes both homoploid and allopolyploid speciation. The numbers of presumed hybrid species averages close to 11% and tends to be concentrated in a subset of angiosperm families. Recent advances in molecular methods have verified species of hybrid origin that had been presumed on the basis of morphology and have identified species that were not initially considered hybrids. Identifying species of hybrid origin is often a challenge and typically based on intermediate morphology, or discrepancies between molecular datasets. Discrepancies between data partitions may result from several factors including poor support, incomplete lineage sorting, or hybridization. A phylogenetic analysis of species in Columnea (Gesneriaceae) indicated significant incongruencies between the cpDNA and nrDNA datasets. Tests that examined whether one or both of the datasets had the phylogenetic signal to reject the topology of the alternate dataset (Shimodaira and Hasegawa [SH] and approximately unbiased [AU] tests) indicated significant differences between the topologies. Splitstree analyses also showed that there was support for the placement of the discrepant taxa in both datasets and that the combined data placed the putative hybrid species in an intermediate position between the two datasets. The genealogical sorting index (GSI) implied that coalescence in nrDNA had occurred in all species where more than a single individual had been sampled, but the GSI value was lower for the cpDNA of most of the putative hybrids, implying that these regions have not yet coalesced in these lineages despite being haploid. The JML test that evaluates simulated species pairwise distances against observed distances also implies that observed nrDNA data generate shorter distances than simulated data, implying hybridization. It is most likely that C. gigantifolia, C. rubriacuta, and C. sp. nov. represent a lineage from a hybrid ancestor, but C. moorei may be a more recent hybrid and may still be undergoing hybridization with sympatric species.