(Phys.org) —Ants have long been known to choose the shortest of several routes to a food source, but what happens when the shortest route is not the fastest? This situation can occur, for example, when ants are forced to ...
Thousands of years ago, our ancestors gave up foraging for food and took up farming, one of the most important and debated decisions in history.
Social Sciences
Mar 7, 2011
8
0
Analysis of data from dozens of foraging societies around the world shows that women hunt in at least 79% of these societies, opposing the widespread belief that men exclusively hunt and women exclusively gather. Abigail ...
Archaeology
Jun 28, 2023
0
962
On average, Americans eat more than 50 pounds of beef each year (according to USDA estimates). But what do beef cattle eat? In the eastern United States, beef cattle often eat tall fescue, a "cool-season" grass. As the name ...
Agriculture
Oct 24, 2022
0
2
After six years of research, a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz has developed a cost-effective new aquaculture feed that eliminates conventional fish meal and fish oil ingredients while also ...
Ecology
Nov 12, 2020
0
1332
The American Heart Association recommends that we eat fish at least twice a week, since fish are high in protein, low in saturated fats and rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Global per capita fish consumption has almost doubled ...
Ecology
Apr 14, 2016
0
109
In the fall of 2015, two years into a heatwave in the Pacific Ocean colloquially known as "the Blob," an unusually large influx of common murres, a small northern seabird, began to wash ashore.
Ecology
Jan 20, 2020
3
283
The study of dental calculus from Late Mesolithic individuals from the site of Vlasac in the Danube Gorges of the central Balkans has provided direct evidence that Mesolithic foragers of this region consumed domestic cereals ...
Archaeology
Aug 29, 2016
0
270
When you think about poaching, ramps are likely not the first thing that come to mind.
Plants & Animals
Aug 4, 2023
1
169
(Phys.org)—Japanese researchers have taken the science of studying an animal in its natural environment a step further by attaching a camera and accelerometers to Adelie penguins as they forage for food off the waters of ...
Foraging is the act of searching for food. As a field of study, foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment in which the animal lives. Foraging theory considers the foraging behavior of animals in reference to the payoff that an animal obtains from different foraging options. Foraging theory predicts that the foraging options that deliver the highest payoff should be favored by foraging animals because it will have the highest fitness payoff. More specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. Human societies that subsist mainly by foraging wild plants and animals are known as hunter-gatherers.
Optimal foraging theory was first proposed in 1966, in two papers published independently, by Robert MacArthur and Eric Pianka, and by J. Merritt Emlen. This theory argued that because of the key importance of successful foraging to an individual's survival, it should be possible to predict foraging behavior by using decision theory to determine the behavior that would be shown by an "optimal forager" - one with perfect knowledge of what to do to maximize usable food intake. While the behavior of real animals inevitably departs from that of the optimal forager, optimal foraging theory has proved very useful in developing hypotheses for describing real foraging behavior. Departures from optimality often help to identify constraints either in the animal's behavioral or cognitive repertoire, or in the environment, that had not previously been suspected. With those constraints identified, foraging behavior often does approach the optimal pattern even if it is not identical to it.
There are many versions of optimal foraging theory that are relevant to different foraging situation. These include:
In recent decades, optimal foraging theory has often been applied to the foraging behaviour of human hunter-gatherers. Although this is controversial, coming under some of the same kinds of attack as the application of socio biological theory to human behaviour, it does represent a convergence of ideas from human ecology and economic anthropology that has proved fruitful and interesting.
Important contributions to foraging theory have been made by:
It has been demostrated on Elysia clarki for the first time in animals in 2011, that photosynthetic capability affects foraging behavior under starvation.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
