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opencc-by-4.0Sep 2017View details →

High rates of vessel noise disrupt foraging in wild harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) - scripts and example dataset

This upload contains Matlab scripts used to compute third-octave levels from audio recorded with DTAG-3 tags on free-ranging harbour porpoises. It also contains examples of results, outputs of such scripts (hp12_272a_noisedata.mat and hp12_293a_noisedata.mat), for two of the seven animals in the study, as well as sensor data for all the animals (e.g. hp12_272a_prh625.nc). The metadata for all the uploaded data are stored in netCDF files (.nc) and the overview plots show noise, vessel presence and foraging data for all study animals. Finally, the upload contains scripts that use the results to perform a series of permutation tests to compare foraging buzz count and total buzz duration in minutes with high- and low-level noise.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2010View details →

Figure 2: Optimization in natural ants collective behavior: foraging and clustering (from [8])-Self-organization and social insects algorithms

On figure 2, two examples of self-organization in natural ants are presented. On the left side, the well-known Deneubourg experiment consists to highlight with a very simple device the ant foraging problem. The ant objectives is to find the optimal way from nest to food source, using pheromone trail deposition. On the right side, cemetery clustering formation are shown at 4 successive times: ants form piles of corpses to clean their nests. Each of them has elementary actions, unknowing the whole situation, but dealing only with local information. There is no supervisor to lead the piles formation which emerges from ant interactions.

opencc-zeroApr 2024View details →

Altitudinal differences in foraging decisions under predation risk in great tits

Foraging decisions under risk of predation are crucial for survival as predation risk can contribute to a reduction of food intake over time leading to a trade-off between starvation and predation. Environmental variation can provoke changes in food accessibility or predation risk that will in turn affect foraging decisions. Specifically, less predictable or harsher environments, such as those found at high elevation, should lead to more risk-prone foraging in order to prevent risk of starvation, but empirical confirmation of this hypothesis is lacking. In the current study, we used video playbacks combined with an automatic feeder to measure continuous foraging choices between control and predator videos by wild great tits originating from high and low elevations and tested under controlled conditions. Great tits discriminated between two conditions representing differences in predation risk and visited the feeder less frequently when a predator was shown. Moreover, we found that birds from low elevation populations were more risk-averse and visited the feeder significantly less when a predator video playback was broadcasted compared to high elevation individuals. This elevation related contrast was also dependent on the season, body mass and fat reserves of individuals, and was more marked in females. Furthermore, adults visited the feeder less in the presence of a predator compared to yearlings. These results are consistent with predictions from life history theory and starvation-predation trade-off hypotheses and could have implications for individual movements and population dynamics in changing environments.

opencc-zeroMay 2024View details →

Data for: Manta rays in the Maldives foraging either in groups or solo

Flexibility in animal foraging strategies can increase overall feeding efficiency. For example, group foraging can increase the efficiency of resource exploitation; conversely, solo foraging can reduce intraspecific competition, particularly at low resource densities. The cost-benefit trade-off of such flexibility is likely to differ within and among individuals. Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are large filter-feeding elasmobranchs that often aggregate to feed on ephemeral upwellings of zooplankton. Over three years in the Maldives, we free-dived to film 3106 foraging events involving 343 individually identifiable M. alfredi. Individuals fed either solo or in groups with a clear leader plus between one and eight followers. M. alfredi were significantly more likely to forage in groups than solo at high zooplankton levels, and at certain locations. Both biotic and abiotic factors contributed to variation in group foraging. Within aggregations, individuals foraged in larger groups when more food was available, and when the overall aggregation was relatively small suggesting that foraging in large groups was more beneficial when food was abundant, and/or the costs of intraspecific competition were outweighed by the efficiency resulting from group foraging strategies. Females, the larger sex, were more likely to lead foraging groups than males. The high within-individual variance (over 55%), suggested individuals were unpredictable across all foraging behaviours, thus individual M. alfredi cannot be classified into foraging types or specialists. Instead, each individual was capable of considerable behavioural flexibility, as predicted for a species reliant on spatially and temporally ephemeral resources.

opencc-zeroJun 2024View details →

Resource manipulation reveals interactive phenotype-dependent foraging in free-ranging lizards

Recent evidence suggests that individuals differ in foraging tactics and this variation is often linked to an individual's behavioural type (BT). Yet, while foraging typically comprises a series of search and handling steps, empirical investigations have rarely considered BT-dependent effects across multiple stages of the foraging process, particularly in natural settings. In our long-term sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa) study system, individuals exhibit behavioural consistency in boldness (measured as an individual's willingness to approach a novel food item in the presence of a threat) and aggressiveness (measured as an individual's response to an 'attack' by a conspecific dummy). These BTs are only weakly correlated and have previously been shown to have interactive effects on lizard space use and movement, suggesting that they could also affect lizard foraging performance, particularly in their search behaviour for food. To investigate how lizards' BTs affect their foraging process in the wild, we supplemented food in 123 patches across a 120-ha study site with three food abundance treatments (high, low, and no-food-controls). Patches were replenished twice a week over the species' entire spring activity season and feeding behaviours were quantified with camera traps at these patches. We tracked lizards using GPS to determine their home range (HR) size and repeatedly assayed their aggressiveness and boldness in designated assays. We hypothesised that bolder lizards would be more efficient foragers while aggressive ones would be less attentive to the quality of foraging patches. We found an interactive BT effect on overall foraging performance. Individuals that were both bold and aggressive ate the highest number of food items from the foraging array. Further dissection of the foraging process showed that aggressive lizards in general ate the fewest food items in part because they visited foraging patches less regularly, and because they discriminated less between high and low-quality patches when revisiting them. Bolder lizards, in contrast, ate more tomatoes because they visited foraging patches more regularly, and ate a higher proportion of the available tomatoes at patches during visits. Our study demonstrates that BTs can interact to affect different search and handling components of the foraging process, leading to within-population variation in foraging success. Given that individual differences in foraging and movement will influence social and ecological interactions, our results highlight the potential role of BT's in shaping individual fitness strategies and population dynamics.

opencc-zeroJun 2024View details →

Ten-a-day: bumblebee pollen loads reveal high consistency in foraging breadth among species, sites, and seasons

Pollen and nectar are crucial resources for bees, but vary greatly amongst plant species in their quantity, nutritional quality, and timing of availability. This makes it challenging to identify an appropriate range of plants to meet the nutritional needs of pollinators through the year, though this information is important in the design of pollinator conservation schemes. Using DNA metabarcoding of pollen loads, we record the floral resource use of UK farmland bumblebees at different stages of their colony lifecycle, and compare this with null models of 'expected' resource use based on landscape-scale resource availability (pollen and nectar), to identify foraging priorities and preferences. We use this approach to ask three main questions: i) what is the foraging breadth of individual bumblebees?; ii) do bumblebees utilise a greater or lesser diversity of plant species than expected if they foraged in proportion to resource availability?; iii) which plant species do bumblebees preferentially utilise? Individual bumblebees foraged from a highly consistent number of different plant taxa (mean: 10 ±0.37 SE per bee), regardless of their species, sampling site, or time of year. This high consistency in foraging breadth, despite large changes in the quantity, identity, and diversity of resource availability, implies a strong behavioural tendency towards a fixed range of foraging resources. This effect was most striking in April when foraging diversity was maintained despite very low landscape-level resource diversity. Bumblebees used some plant taxa significantly more than predicted from their landscape-level floral abundance, nectar, or pollen supply, implying certain desirable characteristics beyond the mere quantity of resource. These included Allium spp. and Vicia spp. in April; Trifolium repens and Lotus corniculatus in July; and Cynareae spp. (thistles) and Taraxacum officinale in September. Our results strongly indicate that resource quantity is not the only factor driving bumblebee foraging patterns, and that resource diversity and quality are also important factors. Thus, in addition to providing large quantities of floral resources, we recommend that pollinator conservation schemes also focus on providing a sufficient diversity of preferred floral resources, enabling pollinators to self-select a diverse and nutritious diet.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2024View details →

Data to test for the early learning of the foraging niche hypothesis in Great Tits

This is the data set for the paper “Did you learn what to eat from your parents? A test of the early learning of the foraging niche hypothesis in Great Tits Parus major”, published in Journal of Avian Biology.  We collected information on foraging preferences of breeding Great Tits during twelve years (2011-2022) in the field station of Can Catà, within Collserola Natural Park (Cerdanyola, Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula, 45º 27' N, 2º 8' E). To obtain data about nestlings’ diet, we attached infra-red Micro-D cameras (Mini Colour Sony IR Camera SK-C170IR) to the nest top inside the nest-box and focused on the entrance, thus allowing us to identify delivered prey. Nests were recorded from 07:00-13:00h (five hours). Prey were classified into three categories -caterpillars, spiders and others- because caterpillars and spiders are the most important prey types for Mediterranean populations of Great Tits. The size of each prey item was determined according to a semi-quantitative scale in relation to beak size of the Great Tit, which has an average size of 9 mm. Size categories were: 1=small (smaller than beak size), 2 = medium (similar to beak size), 3 = large (larger than beak size). Data refers to percentage of caterpillars, percentage of spiders, percentage of ‘other prey’ and mean prey size (of all prey categories). To perform the analyses the percentage of each type of prey (caterpillars, spiders and ‘other prey’) were square-root transformed to approximate normality. Since the diet of individuals may vary across years due to changing weather conditions and environmental factors affecting prey availability, before comparing an individual’s diet across different years, data was standardised for different variables using a generalised linear mixed-effects model fitted by restricted maximum likelihood. Variables included were ‘year’, ‘sex’, ‘age’ (to distinguish if the breeding individual was yearling or adult), ‘brood size’, ‘brood age’, ‘date of recording’ (taken as the number of days from 1st April to control for phenology), and the proportion of oak trees in relation to Aleppo Pines within 25m of the nest-box. Analysis allowed to extracte residuals for further analysis, which appear in the four provided tables.   For each individual we provide prey data corresponding to the chick stage and the data from the adult stage. Data is divided in four different sheets, using different variants of the diet data that individuals received as a chick: (1) using exclusively the father’s data (referred to as Father Data), (2) using only the mother’s data (referred to as Mother Data), (3) using the mean of both parents’ prey data (referred to as Mean Data), and (4) using weighted parents data depending on the number of provisioning trips (giving more importance to the prey delivered by the most actively feeding parent, referred to as Weighted Data).

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2011View details →

Fig. 3 in Exploratory Analyses Of Foraging Habitat Selection Of The Red-Footed Falcon (Falco Vespertinus)

Fig. 3. Duality diagram of the eigenanalysis of selection ratios of radio-tracked Red-footed Falcons. The top figure shows the habitat loadings () on two factorial axes, while the lower figure shows the habitat preference of individuals (•) in the same factorial space (see also Table 1). The birds can be

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2011View details →

Fig. 2 in Exploratory Analyses Of Foraging Habitat Selection Of The Red-Footed Falcon (Falco Vespertinus)

Fig. 2. Global Manly Selection ratios ± Confidence intervals (CI) of the habitat types analysed. The black dots (•) represent the mean selectivity rate of each habitat type considered. A habitat type can be considered as avoided if the global selection ratio is located in the 0–1 interval, while it can be con-

Figure 4 in Native food spectrum, size-matching and foraging efficiency of the Mediterranean harvester ant Messor wasmanni (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Figure 4. Scatter diagram load ratio versus ant size. The load ratio was calculated as follows: ant size (head width) + load size/ant size. Data are from random samples of returning foragers of a single M. wasmanni colony. One dot represents one observation (N = 776). Linear regression analysis revealed a low negative correlation (R² = 0.14, p = 0.0001) between ant size and load ratio. The larger the worker size class, the smaller the range in the load ratio. Residuals from regressions were approximately normally distributed around zero in all cases.

Figure 5 in Native food spectrum, size-matching and foraging efficiency of the Mediterranean harvester ant Messor wasmanni (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Figure 5. Mean foraging efficiency (in %) per day. Calculations were performed separately per size class and per season. Foraging efficiency varied considerably over the seasons and between size classes. Sample size represented by numbers in bars. Minor = minor-sized workers, Media = media-sized workers, Major = major-sized workers.

Figure 3 in Native food spectrum, size-matching and foraging efficiency of the Mediterranean harvester ant Messor wasmanni (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Figure 3. Scatter diagram load size versus ant size. Data are from random samples of returning foragers of a single M. wasmanni colony. One dot represents one observation (N = 776). Linear regression analysis revealed a very low positive correlation (R² = 0.02, p = 0.0001) between ant size and load size, indicating only a small tendency for majorsized workers to carry larger loads than minor-sized workers. Residuals from regressions were approximately normally distributed around zero in all cases.

Figure. 1 in Native food spectrum, size-matching and foraging efficiency of the Mediterranean harvester ant Messor wasmanni (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Figure. 1. Overview of the topics discussed in the paper. Surface activity was analysed at both colony level and individual level.

Figure 2 in Native food spectrum, size-matching and foraging efficiency of the Mediterranean harvester ant Messor wasmanni (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Figure 2. Frequency distribution of harvested material in percent (May, July-August and October 2009). During periods of aboveground activity, returning foragers carrying food items and other materials were collected at random from foraging trails 10 cm far from the nest entrances.

opencc-by-4.0Jul 2024View details →

Datasets: Laser scarecrows reduce avian corn-foraging propensity but not bout length in aviary trials

This archive is comprised of 3 files: (1) Archive Metadata: a description of the data collection, behavioral sampling, and datafile structure (variables); (2) An excel file containing scan sample data used in 2 analyses; and  (3) An excel file containing focal foraging bout data for a 3rd analysis for the named manuscript.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2023View details →

Рис. 2. Основные места концентрации фуражирующих особей Bombus distinguendus в АрхангеΛьской обΛасти: 1 — Разнотравно-зΛаковый Λуг с Trifolium pratense и Trifolium repens в окрестностях гороΑа Мезень; 2 — Разнотравно-зΛаковый Λуг по обочине Αороги с Centaurea scabiosa в окрестностях сеΛа ХоΛмогоры; 3 – Агроценоз со Stachys palustris в ΑеΛьте реки Северная Δвина; 4 — РуΑераΛьное сообщество с Chamaenerion angustifolium в ΑеΛьте реки Северная Δвина Fig. 2. Typical foraging habitats of Bombus distinguendus in Arkhangelsk Oblast: 1 — Meadow with Trifolium pratense and Trifolium repens near the town of Mezen; 2 — Roadside meadow with Centaurea scabiosa near the village of Kholmogory; 3 — Agricultural habitat with Stachys palustris in the delta of the Northern Dvina River; 4 — Ruderal community with Chamaenerion angustifolium in the delta of the Northern Dvina River in Bombus distinguendus Morawitz, 1869 (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia: Distribution, ecology and conservation

Рис. 2. Основные места концентрации фуражирующих особей Bombus distinguendus в АрхангеΛьской обΛасти: 1 — Разнотравно-зΛаковый Λуг с Trifolium pratense и Trifolium repens в окрестностях гороΑа Мезень; 2 — Разнотравно-зΛаковый Λуг по обочине Αороги с Centaurea scabiosa в окрестностях сеΛа ХоΛмогоры; 3 – Агроценоз со Stachys palustris в ΑеΛьте реки Северная Δвина; 4 — РуΑераΛьное сообщество с Chamaenerion angustifolium в ΑеΛьте реки Северная Δвина Fig. 2. Typical foraging habitats of Bombus distinguendus in Arkhangelsk Oblast: 1 — Meadow with Trifolium pratense and Trifolium repens near the town of Mezen; 2 — Roadside meadow with Centaurea scabiosa near the village of Kholmogory; 3 — Agricultural habitat with Stachys palustris in the delta of the Northern Dvina River; 4 — Ruderal community with Chamaenerion angustifolium in the delta of the Northern Dvina River

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2016View details →

Fig. 2 in Foraging activity of Palmistichus elaeisis (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) at various densities on pupae of the eucalyptus defoliator Thyrinteina arnobia (Lepidoptera: Geometridae)

Fig. 2. (A) Duraton of life cycle (egg to adult) and (B) numbers of Palmistichus elaeisis progeny with a density of 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 21 ovipositng females per Thyrinteina arnobia pupa at 25 ± 2 °C, 70 ± 10% RH, and a 12:12 h L:D photoperiod.

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2016View details →

Fig. 1 in Foraging activity of Palmistichus elaeisis (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) at various densities on pupae of the eucalyptus defoliator Thyrinteina arnobia (Lepidoptera: Geometridae)

Fig. 1. Percentage of pupae parasitzed and percentage of emergence of Palmistichus elaeisis with a density of 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 21 ovipositng females per Thyrinteina arnobia pupa at 25 ± 2 °C, 70 ± 10% RH, and a 12:12 h L:D photoperiod. Statstcal significance: parasitsm, P = 0.3770; emergence, P = 0.034.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2017View details →

Fig. 3 in Laboratory evaluations of the foraging success of Tamarixia radiata (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) on flowers and extrafloral nectaries: potential use of nectar plants for conservation biological control of Asian citrus psyllid (Hemiptera: Liviidae)

Fig. 3. Choice of cups with either unscented sucrose solution or with bananascented sucrose solution made by Tamarixia radiata following a pre-test exposure to either 1.0 M sucrose solution or 1.0 M sucrose solution and banana flavor extract (G-test; ** = P ≤ 0.01; NS = not significant).