Daniel Papaj

About

Daniel Papaj is a Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on learning and cognition in bees, tephritid fruit flies, and butterflies, as well as plant-insect interactions. He is involved in exploring the behavioral and ecological aspects of these insects, contributing to the understanding of their interactions with their environment and other species.

Research topics

• Biology
• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Ecology
• Communication
• Computer Science
• Cognitive psychology
• Genetics
• Audiology
• Zoology

Selected publications

• Sex differences in pollinator behavior: Patterns across species and consequences for the mutualism

  Journal of Animal Ecology · 2019-03-28 · 45 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Intraspecific variation in floral visitor behaviour and pollination efficiency has been much less studied than interspecific variation. Nevertheless, it is clear that large differences in these traits exist within species, and in particular between sexes within species. With the exception of a few well-studied interactions, however, the consequences of these differences in the pollinators and visited plants remain to be investigated. In this review, we document large and consistent differences i…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Why study plasticity in multiple traits? New hypotheses for how phenotypically plastic traits interact during development and selection

  Evolution · 2022 · 40 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Organisms can often respond adaptively to a change in their environment through phenotypic plasticity in multiple traits, a phenomenon termed as multivariate plasticity. These different plastic responses could interact and affect each other's development as well as selection on each other, but the causes and consequences of these interactions have received relatively little attention. Here, we propose a new conceptual framework for understanding how different plastic responses can affect each ot…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sonicating bees demonstrate flexible pollen extraction without instrumental learning

  Current Zoology · 2019-03-28 · 38 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Pollen collection is necessary for bee survival and important for flowering plant reproduction, yet if and how pollen extraction motor routines are modified with experience is largely unknown. Here, we used an automated reward and monitoring system to evaluate modification in a common pollen-extraction routine, floral sonication. Through a series of laboratory experiments with the bumblebee, Bombus impatiens, we examined whether variation in sonication frequency and acceleration is due…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Sensory and Cognitive Ecology of Nectar Robbing

  Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution · 2021-10-15 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  Animals foraging from flowers must assess their environment and make critical decisions about which patches, plants, and flowers to exploit to obtain limiting resources. The cognitive ecology of plant-pollinator interactions explores not only the complex nature of pollinator foraging behavior and decision making, but also how cognition shapes pollination and plant fitness. Floral visitors sometimes depart from what we think of as typical pollinator behavior and instead exploit floral resources b…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sex differences in the foraging behavior of a generalist hawkmoth

  Insect Science · 2021 · 14 citations

  Within-species variation in pollinator behavior is widely observed, but its causes have been minimally investigated. Pollinator sex is associated with large differences in behavior that may lead to predictable differences in flower foraging, but this expectation has not been explicitly tested. We investigate sex-associated differences in nectar-foraging behavior of the hawkmoth Hyles lineata, using pollen on the proboscis as a proxy for flower visitation. We tested two predictions emerging from…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Flowers as complex signals: The role of signal uncertainty

  NSF · $420k · 2009–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Henar Alonso-Pimentel

  University of Arizona

  21 shared

• Ronald J. Prokopy

  20 shared

• Anne S. Leonard

  University of Nevada, Reno

  19 shared

• Avery L. Russell

  Missouri State University

  18 shared

• César R. Nufio

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  15 shared

• Anna Dornhaus

  University of Arizona

  13 shared

• L.E.M. Vet

  11 shared

• Goggy Davidowitz

  University of Arizona

  9 shared

Labs

• Daniel Papaj LaboratoryPI

Similar researchers at University of Arizona

• Bruce Tabashnikh-94
• Nicholas Strausfeldh-75