Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology Behavioral ecology, or etoecology, is the study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling an animal to adapt to its environment . Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen (a seminal figure in the study of animal behavior) outlined the four causes of behavior 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 Fitness is a central idea in evolutionary theory. It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce, and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual's genes in all the genes of the next generation. If differences in individual genotypes affect fitness, then the frequencies of the genotypes will change over payoff. More specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging.[1]
Optimal foraging theory A central concern of ecology has traditionally been foraging behavior. In its most basic form, optimal foraging theory states that organisms forage in such a way as to maximize their energy intake per unit time. In other words, they behave in such a way as to find, capture and consume food containing the most calories while expending the least was first proposed in 1966, in two papers published independently, by Robert MacArthur and Eric Pianka Eric R. Pianka is an American biologist, best known for his contributions to herpetology and evolutionary ecology. He is nicknamed "The Lizard Man",[2] and by J. Merritt Emlen.[3] 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 Decision theory in economics, philosophy, mathematics and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision. It is very closely related to the field of game 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 Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of 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 A central concern of ecology has traditionally been foraging behavior. In its most basic form, optimal foraging theory states that organisms forage in such a way as to maximize their energy intake per unit time. In other words, they behave in such a way as to find, capture and consume food containing the most calories while expending the least that are relevant to different foraging situation. These include:
- The optimal diet model, which describes the behavior of a forager that encounters different types of prey and must choose which to attack
- Patch selection theory, which describes the behavior of a forager whose prey is concentrated in small areas with a significant travel time between them
- Central place foraging theory, which describes the behavior of a forager that must return to a particular place in order to consume its food, or perhaps to hoard it or feed it to a mate or offspring In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, a new organism produced by one or more parents.
In recent decades, optimal foraging theory has frequently been applied to the foraging behaviour of human hunter-gatherers A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more. Although this is controversial, coming under some of the same kinds of attack as the application of socio biological Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines which attempts to explain social behavior in animal species by considering the Darwinian advantages specific behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics and other theory to human behaviour, it does represent a convergence of ideas from human ecology Human ecology is the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments and economic anthropology Economic anthropology is a scholarly field that attempts to explain human economic behavior using the tools of both economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with economics. There are three major paradigms within the field of economic anthropology: formalism, substantivism and culturalism that has proved fruitful and interesting.
Important contributions to foraging theory have been made by:
- Eric Charnov Eric L. Charnov is an American evolutionary ecologist. He is best known for his work on foraging, especially the marginal value theorem, and life history theory, especially sex allocation and scaling/allometric rules. His 140 papers and 3 books have been cited about 15,000 times in the ISI data base; three have been cited at least 1500 times, 27, who developed the marginal value theorem In behavioral ecology, the marginal value theorem considers an optimally foraging animal exploiting resources distributed in patches and that must decide when to leave a patch to start searching for a fresh one. The animal is assumed to have evolved to optimize a cost/benefit ratio: searching for and manipulating food is costly, while food is a to predict the behaviour of foragers using patches;
- Sir John Krebs John Richard Krebs, Baron Krebs FRS is a world leader in zoology and more specifically bird behaviour. He is currently the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford University. Krebs was knighted in 1999, and was the first Chairman of the British Food Standards Agency (2000–05), with work on the optimal diet model in relation to tits Baeolophus is a genus of bird, commonly known as titmice in the Paridae family, all of which are native to North America. In the past, most authorities retained Baeolophus as a subgenus within the genus Parus, but treatment as a distinct genus, initiated by the American Ornithologists Union, is now widely accepted and chickadees The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute Paridae, a large family of small passerine birds which occur in the northern hemisphere and Africa. Most were formerly classified in the genus Parus;
- John Goss-Custard, who first tested the optimal diet model against behaviour in the field, using redshank The Common Redshank or simply Redshank is an Eurasian wader in the large family Scolopacidae, and then proceeded to an extensive study of foraging in the Common Pied Oystercatcher The Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus, also known as the Common Pied Oystercatcher, or just Oystercatcher, is a wader in the oystercatcher bird family Haematopodidae. It is the most widespread of the oystercatchers, with three races breeding in western Europe, central Eurasia, Kamchatka, China, and Western coast of Korea. No other.
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See also
- Forage Forage is plant material eaten by grazing livestock. Historically the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage
- Hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. Up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more
Notes
- ^ Hughes, Roger N, ed. (1989), Behavioural Mechanisms of Food Selection, London & New York, p. v, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-387-51762-6
- ^ MacArthur RH, Pianka ER (1966), "On the optimal use of a patchy environment.", American Naturalist 100 (916): 603–9, doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1086/282454, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0147(196611/12)100%3A916%3C603%3AOOUOAP%3E2.0.CO;2-1
- ^ Emlen, J. M (1966), "The role of time and energy in food preference", The American Naturalist 100: 611-617, doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1086/282455, http://www.jstor.org/pss/2459299
References
- Stephens, D. W., & Krebs, J. R. (1986). Foraging theory. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Stephens, D. W., Brown, J. S., & Ydenberg, R .C. (2007) Foraging: Behavior and Ecology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- L.-A. Giraldeau and T. Caraco, Social Foraging Theory (2000). Princeton University Press, May 2000.
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Telegraph.co.uk
... near Land's End in Cornwall. The two-day course costs 165, which includes three foraging excursions, cooking demonstrations and meals.
