XVI International Botanical Congess

Individuals of some species of pollinating insects tend to restrict their visits to only a few out of the available plant species, in the process bypassing valuable food sources. The question of why this flower constancy exists is a rich and important one. I elucidate how different sensory and motor memories from natural foraging tasks are stored and retrieved, and conclude that flower constancy is likely to have multiple causes. Possible constraints favoring constancy are interference sensitivity of short term memory, and temporal limitations on retrieving information from long term memory as rapidly as from short term memory. In addition, retrieving memories may be slower and more prone to errors when there are several options than when an insect copes only with a single task.