Testing optimal foraging theory in a penguin–krill system

Testing optimal foraging theory in a penguin-krill system.

Food is heterogeneously distributed in nature, and understanding how animals search for and exploit food patches is a fundamental challenge in ecology. The classic marginal value theorem (MVT) formulates optimal patch residence time in response to patch quality. The MVT was generally proved in controlled animal experiments; however, owing to the technical difficulties in recording foraging beha...

Optimal Foraging Theory Revisited

Optimal foraging theory explains adaptation via natural selection through quan-titative models. Behaviors that are most likely to be favored by natural selection canbe predicted by maximizing functions representing Darwinian fitness. Optimizationhas natural applications in engineering, and so this approach can also be used to de-sign behaviors of engineered agents. In this thesi...

Unorthodox Optimal Foraging Theory

As the Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB) eld continues to mature, it is essential that general methodological positions become elaborated into practical programmes of research. This paper describes how a particular avour of SAB modelling the use of genetic algorithms to design situated agent (animat) architectures-can eeec-tively complementòptimal foraging theory', as it is understood in t...

Optimal Foraging Theory - OFT

Optimal search behavior and classic foraging theory

Random walk methods and diffusion theory pervaded ecological sciences as methods to analyze and describe animal movement. Consequently, statistical physics was mostly seen as a toolbox rather than as a conceptual framework that could contribute to theory on evolutionary biology and ecology. However, the existence of mechanistic relationships and feedbacks between behavioral processes and statis...