Determinism as a statistical metric for ecologically important recurrent behaviors with trapline foraging as a case study

Ayers, C.A., P.R. Armsworth, B.J. Brosi. Determinism as a statistical metric for ecologically important recurrent behaviors with trapline foraging as a case study. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2015. 69:1395–1404

Trapline foraging is a key behavioral tactic used by pollinators and many other groups of animals. This work develops a new method for measuring traplining—which has been notoriously challenging to quantify—borrowing quantitative tools from statistical physics.