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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 ...
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.
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 ...
They are known to forage in “patchy” environments, and research has shown that their behavior can be modeled by optimal foraging models, including the MVT. In a 1977 study by R.A. Cowie, [ 3 ] birds were deprived of food and then allowed to forage through patches in two different environments (the environments differed only in distance ...
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.
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.
The wood-pasture hypothesis (also known as the Vera hypothesis and the megaherbivore theory) is a scientific hypothesis positing that open and semi-open pastures and wood-pastures formed the predominant type of landscape in post-glacial temperate Europe, rather than the common belief of primeval forests.