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23 results for “optimal foraging”
Figure 2: Optimization in natural ants collective behavior: foraging and clustering (from [8])-Self-organization and social insects algorithms
<p>On figure 2, two examples of self-organization in natural ants are presented.<br> On the left side, the well-known Deneubourg experiment consists to highlight<br> with a very simple device the ant foraging problem. The ant objectives is<br> to find the optimal way from nest to food source, using pheromone trail deposition.<br> On the right side, cemetery clustering formation are shown at 4<br> successive times: ants form piles of corpses to clean their nests. Each of them<br> has elementary actions, unknowing the whole situation, but dealing only with<br> local information. There is no supervisor to lead the piles formation which<br> emerges from ant interactions.</p>
Figure 4 in Optimal FOraging OF NeOtrOpical Otters (CarnivOra: Mustelidae) in an urban river and predOminance OF generalist and sedentary fish in their diet
Figure 4. Results of the Ivlev's selectivity index for the dataset from: (A) May 2006 to September 2007; (B) September 2006 to January 2007 (wet season); (C) February to August 2007 (dry season).
Figures 1-2 in Optimal foraging or predator avoidance: why does the Amazon spider Hingstepeira folisecens (Araneae: Araneidae) adopt alternative foraging behaviors?
Figures 1-2. Hingstepeira folisecens orb web in an area of the Amazon forest, Brazil: (1) vertical orb web with the rolled dry leaf used as a shelter by the spider attached to the hub; (2) shelter's detail showing the entrance oriented just downwards and the spider leaving it. Scale bars: 1 = 10 mm, 2 = 5 mm.
Human access constrains optimal foraging and habitat availability in an avian generalist
<p>Animals balance costs of anti-predator behaviors with resource acquisition to minimize hunting and other mortality risks and maximize their physiological condition. This inherent trade-off between forage abundance and quality, and mortality risk is intensified in human-dominated landscapes because fragmentation, habitat loss, and degradation of natural vegetation communities is often coupled with artificially-enhanced vegetation (i.e., food plots) creating high-risk high-reward resource selection decisions. Our goal was to evaluate autumn–winter resource selection trade-offs for an intensively hunted avian generalist. We hypothesized human access was a reliable cue for hunting predation risk and thus predicted resource selection patterns would be spatiotemporally dependent upon levels of access and their perceived risk. Specifically, we evaluated resource selection of local-scale flights between diel periods of 426 mallards (<em>Anas</em> <em>platyrhynchos</em>) relative to wetland type, forage quality, and differing levels of human access across hunting and non-hunting seasons. Mallards selected areas that prohibited human access and generally avoided areas that allowed access diurnally, especially during hunting season. Mallards compensated by selecting for high-energy and greater quality foraging patches on allowable human access areas nocturnally when they were devoid of hunters. Post-season selection across human access gradients did not return to pre-hunting levels immediately, perhaps suggesting a delayed response to reacclimate to non-hunted activities and thus agreeing with the assessment mismatch hypothesis. Last, wetland availability and human access constrained selection for optimal natural forage quality (i.e., seed biomass and forage productivity) diurnally during pre-season and hunting season, respectively; however, mallards were freed from these constraints nocturnally during hunting season and during post-season. Our results suggest risk-avoidance of human accessible (i.e., hunted) areas is a primary driver of resource selection behaviors by mallards and could be a local to landscape-level process influencing distributions, instead of forage abundance and quality, which has long-been assumed by waterfowl conservation planners in North America. Broadly, even an avian generalist, well-adapted to anthropogenic landscapes, avoids areas where hunting and human access is allowed. Future conservation planning and implementation must consider management for recreational access (i.e., people) equally important as foraging habitat management for wintering waterfowl.</p>
Data for: Nest material preferences in wild hazel dormice Muscardinus avellanarius: Testing predictions from optimal foraging theory
<p class="MsoNormal">Obtaining nesting material presents an optimal foraging problem, collection of materials incurs a cost in terms of risk of predation and energy spent, and individuals must balance these costs with the benefits of using that material in the nest. The hazel dormouse, <em>Muscardinus avellanarius</em> is an endangered British mammal in which both sexes build nests. However, whether material used in their construction follows the predictions of optimal foraging theory is unknown. Here, we analyse the use of nesting materials in forty two breeding nests from six locations in Southwest England. Nests were characterised in terms of which plants were used, the relative amount of each plant, and how far away the nearest source was. We find that dormice exhibit a preference for plants closer to the nest, but that the distance they are prepared to travel depends on the plant species. Dormice travelled further to collect honeysuckle <em>Lonicera periclymenum</em>, oak <em>Quercus robur</em>, and beech <em>Fagus sylvatica</em> than any other plants. Distance did not affect the relative amount used, although the proportion of honeysuckle in nests was highest, and more effort was expended collecting honeysuckle, beech, bramble <em>Rubus fruticosus</em> and oak compared to other plants. Our results suggest that not all aspects of optimal foraging theory apply to nest material collection. However, optimal foraging theory is a useful model to examine nest material collection, providing testable predictions. As found previously honeysuckle is important as a nesting material, and should be taken account when assessing suitability of sites for dormice.</p>
Optimal prey for red fox cubs – an example of dual optimizing foraging strategy in foxes from a dynamic wetland habitat
<p>The red fox (<em>Vulpes</em> <em>vulpes</em>) is the most abundant mesopredator in the Central-European region. Detailed knowledge about their feeding behavior is important both from ecological and wildlife management reasons. Food choices of foxes are poorly predictable in high-biodiversity marshlands. The main aim of our study was to sample parallel the main food-type abundances in the study area and analyze the diet of fox cubs and cohabiting adults across three years during the period of maternal dependence of the cubs. According to the optimal foraging theory, we predicted that the cubs' diet would show higher energy content, would be more varied, and the individual prey species fed to the young would be larger. We analyzed the composition of adult fox and cub fecal samples collected separately around dens in a marshland of western Hungary, May 2014, 2017 and 2020, when the abundance values of main food sources differed. Rodents and waterfowl dominated the diet, but their relative occurrence in the samples showed yearly variations. We found that vixens follow a dual optimizing foraging strategy regarding their provisioning of the cubs and their own diet. Adult foxes optimized their diet according to the actual yearly abundances of their main food sources. Additionally, they preferred prey items that can be consumed at the site of capture (large carrion and small individual prey items). Cubs on the other hand were provisioned with optimal high-energy food, even if those in question became less abundant in that year. Vixens mostly fed to their young either larger rodents and waterfowl, or multiple small rodents at a time – these types of prey are both optimal for transportation as a single load. Providing optimal prey at an early age in a changing environment may contribute to the ecological success of the red fox.</p>
Increased initial task difficulty drives social foragers to develop sub-optimal conformity instead of adaptive diversity
<p>The extent to which animal societies exhibit social conformity as opposed to behavioural diversity is commonly attributed to adaptive learning strategies. Less attention is given to the possibility that the relative difficulty of learning a task socially as opposed to individually can be critical for social learning dynamics. Here we show that by raising initial task difficulty, house sparrows previously shown to exhibit adaptive social diversity become predominantly conformists. The task we used required opening feeding well covers (easier to learn socially) and to choose the covers with the rewarding cues (easy to learn individually). We replicated a previous study where sparrows exhibited adaptive diversity, but did not pre-train the naive sparrows to open covers, making the task initially more difficult. In sharp contrast to the previous study results, most sparrows continued to conform to the demonstrated cue even after experiencing greater success with the alternative rewarding cue for which competition was less intense. Thus, our study shows that a task's cognitive demands, such as the initial dependency on social demonstration, can change the entire learning dynamics, causing social animals to exhibit sub-optimal social conformity rather than adaptive diversity under otherwise identical conditions.</p>
Deer dietary responses to wildfire: optimal foraging, individual specialization, or opportunism?
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Increased initial task difficulty drives social foragers to develop sub-optimal conformity instead of adaptive diversity
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Optimal prey for red fox cubs – an example of dual optimizing foraging strategy in foxes from a dynamic wetland habitat
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Human access constrains optimal foraging and habitat availability in an avian generalist
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Data for: Nest material preferences in wild hazel dormice Muscardinus avellanarius: Testing predictions from optimal foraging theory
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Optimal foraging can drive emergent initiator-follower dynamics in social groups
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Data for: Combining radio-telemetry and radar measurements to test optimal foraging in an aerial insectivore bird
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Data from: Optimal foraging or surplus killing: selective consumption and discarding of salmon by brown bears
Selective consumption of prey by predators, observed in many animals, is often attributed to optimal foraging. Consistent with this idea, brown bears (Ursus arctos) often exhibit partial consumption, feeding exclusively on lipid-rich tissues of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), and discarding remains. However, bears also kill and abandon salmon without consuming any tissue. These discarded fish may be consistent with optimal foraging choices if they are of poor quality and if bears have easy access to better prey, or may reveal non-adaptive surplus killing behavior if fish are killed and discarded at random or solely based on prey abundance. Using 21 consecutive years of data from sockeye salmon (O. nerka) carcass surveys in Alaska, we found that foraging to maximize energy intake best explained prey discarding behavior. Specifically, discarding was more common under high prey abundance, late in the salmon run, and with low quality prey. Patterns of tissue consumption were consistent with these findings; bears were less likely to consume belly, body, and brain tissue when prey condition decreased. Other factors not quantified here (e.g., bear demography, alternative food resources) almost certainly influence prey discard and partial consumption, though the salmon-related factors explored here strongly influenced bear foraging decisions that were consistent with optimal foraging theory. We did not find clear evidence of surplus killing behavior in brown bears foraging on salmon, but prey selectivity manifested itself through both discarding and partial consumption, which contributes to our ability to predict transport of salmon nutrients by bears across ecosystem boundaries.
Data from: Optimal foraging or surplus killing: selective consumption and discarding of salmon by brown bears
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From fear to feast: Rattlesnakes navigate the landscape of fear to optimize foraging
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Data from: Optimal foraging by herbivores maintains polymorphism in defence in a natural plant population
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Data for "An application of upscaled optimal foraging theory using hidden Markov modelling: year-round behavioural variation in a large arctic herbivore"
<p>Data for the article “An application of upscaled optimal foraging theory using hidden Markov modelling: year-round behavioural variation in a large arctic herbivore”</p> <p>By LT Beumer, J Pohle, NMS Schmidt, M Chimienti, JP Desforges, LH Hansen, R Langrock, SH Pedersen, M Stelvig, FM van Beest</p> <p> </p> <p>The data set includes three files: A readme file describing the data files and two data files accompanying the above publication.</p> <p>Combined, the two data files represent the dataset collected by GPS collars fitted on 19 female muskoxen in northeast Greenland (28 muskox-years with 153-1062 observation days/animal) and associated extracted covariates, divided into a summer and winter season dataset as modelled in the article. Data here are given as included in the models (for a description of cleaning procedures, see article). All continuous, non-cyclical covariates were standardised to have zero mean and unit standard deviation to improve numerical stability of parameter estimation. This is indicated by “_scaled” in the column name.</p> <p>For further queries please contact nms@bios.au.dk</p>
Figure 3 in Optimal FOraging OF NeOtrOpical Otters (CarnivOra: Mustelidae) in an urban river and predOminance OF generalist and sedentary fish in their diet
Figure 3. Randomized species accumulation curve (Coleman) for fecal samples of Lontra longicaudis collected during the wet and dry seasons in the Santa Lúcia Biological Station (SLBS) between May 2006 and September 2007.
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