self-pollination (iterogamy) because the pollinator won't return to the same flower on that particular foraging session. Overall, plant species that are visited by trapliners have increased fitness and evolutionary advantages. Because of this mutualistic relationship between traplining hummingbirds and plants, traplining hummingbirds have been referred to as "legitimate pollinators", while territorial hummingbirds have been referred to as "nectar thieves". If an organism that traplines learns where a food source is once, they can always return to that food source because they can remember minute details about the location of the source. This allows them to adapt quickly if one of the major sources suddenly becomes scarce or destroyed. Disadvantages Serious obstacles, such as the arrangement of plant life, can hamper traplining. If the route zig zags through the understory of the tropical rainforest, some of the organisms using the route can get lost because of very subtle changes, such as a treefall gap or heavy rainfall. This could cause an individual to be separated from the entire group if it isn't able to find the path back to the original route. Some food sources can be overlooked because the traplining route in use does not lead the organisms to the area that these resources are in. Since the route is very specific, the organisms following it may also miss out on opportunities to come in contact with potential mates. Male bumblebees going directly to the source of food have been observed to pass up on female bumblebees as potential mates that are along the same path, preferring to continue foraging and bring food back to the hive. This can take away from species diversification and could possibly delete some traits in the gene pool that are useful. Research Observing traplining in the natural world has proven to be very difficult and little is known about how and why species trapline, but the study of traplining in the natural environment does take place. In one particular study, individual bees trained on five artificial flowers of equal reward were observed traplining between those five flowers. When a new flower of higher reward gets included in the group, the bees subsequently adjust their trapline to include the higher reward flower. Under natural conditions they hypothesized that it would likely be beneficial for bees to prioritize higher reward flowers to either beat out competition or conserve energy. In other field experiments, ecologists created a