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Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food. Although obtaining food provides the animal with energy, searching for and capturing the food require both energy and time.
Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives. Behavioral ecologists use economic models and categories to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimal model.
Risk sensitive foraging is based on experimental evidence that the net energy budget level of an animal is predictive of type of foraging activity an animal will employ. [1] Experimental evidence has indicated that individuals will change the type of foraging strategy that they use depending on environmental conditions and ability to meet net ...
One common use of the optimality model is in optimal foraging theory. For example, the foraging behavior in starlings can be predicted using an optimality model, specifically a marginal value theorem model. Researchers compared the amount of time a bird forages to the distance the bird travels to the foraging ground. [19]
Behavioral evolution is therefore influenced by both the physical environment and interactions between other individuals. An example of how changes in geography can make a strategy susceptible to alternative strategies is the parasitization of the African honey bee, A. m. scutellata.
These are general-purpose mechanisms, devoid of situational content, and function equally well regardless of behavioral domain. For example the so-called 'problem-solving methods' with which cognitive psychologists have traditionally busied themselves are abstract rational strategies (e.g. break the problem into smaller parts or start working ...
Information foraging is a theory that applies the ideas from optimal foraging theory to understand how human users search for information. The theory is based on the assumption that, when searching for information, humans use "built-in" foraging mechanisms that evolved to help our animal ancestors find food.
In ethology and behavioral ecology, trap-lining or traplining is a feeding strategy in which an individual visits food sources on a regular, repeatable sequence, much as trappers check their lines of traps. [1] Traplining is usually seen in species foraging for floral resources. [2]