Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Worker bees forage nectar not only for themselves, but for their whole hive community. Optimal foraging theory predicts that this bee will forage in a way that will maximize its hive's net yield of energy. Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is a behavioral ecology model that helps predict how an animal behaves when searching for food. Although ...
This theory argues 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 an "optimal forager" would exhibit. Such a forager has perfect knowledge of what to do to maximize usable food intake.
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.
The marginal value theorem (MVT) is an optimality model that usually describes the behavior of an optimally foraging individual in a system where resources (often food) are located in discrete patches separated by areas with no resources.
As an optimal foraging model, the Ideal Free Distribution predicts that the ratio of individuals between two foraging sites will match the ratio of resources in those two sites. This prediction is similar to the Matching Law of individual choice, which states that an individual's rate of response will be proportional to the positive ...
Central place foraging (CPF) theory is an evolutionary ecology model for analyzing how an organism can maximize foraging rates while traveling through a patch (a discrete resource concentration), but maintains the key distinction of a forager traveling from a home base to a distant foraging location rather than simply passing through an area or travelling at random.
Optimality models are used to predict optimal behavior (ex. time spent foraging). To make predictions about optimal behavior, cost-benefit graphs are used to visualize the optimality model (see Fig 1). Optimality occurs at the point in which the difference between benefits and costs for obtaining a currency via a particular behavior is maximized.
EwE has three main components: Ecopath – a static, mass-balanced snapshot of the system [2]; Ecosim – a time dynamic simulation module for policy exploration [3]; Ecospace – a spatial and temporal dynamic module designed for exploring the combined impacts of fishing, the placement of protected areas, [4] and changing environmental conditions.