Indirect risk effects of predators on prey behavior can have more of an impact on prey populations than direct consumptive effects. Predation risk can elicit more vigilance behavior in prey, reducing the amount of time available for other activities, such as foraging, which could potentially reduce foraging efficiency. Understanding the conditions associated with predation risk and the specific...

This paper gives proof of convergence for a learning algorithm that describes how anoles (lizards found in the Caribbean) learn foraging threshold distance. An anole will pursue a prey if and only if it is within this threshold of the anole's perch. The learning algorithm was proposed by Roughgarden and his colleagues. They experimentally determined that this algorithm quickly converges to the ...

Presents the results of a study into the effectiveness of Dublin Core metadata for retrieval. The metadata from twenty Australian government and educational organisations was analysed. The metadata was assessed for its capacity to facilitate title, creator/publisher, and subject access. From the results, it emerged that title metadata added little value, that creator/publisher access was flawed...

BACKGROUND Plastic root-foraging responses have been widely recognized as an important strategy for plants to explore heterogeneously distributed resources. However, the benefits and costs of root foraging have received little attention. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In a greenhouse experiment, we grew pairs of connected ramets of 22 genotypes of the stoloniferous plant Potentilla reptans in...

An essential first step in analogy is retrieval of a source analogue appropriate for the target situation. In this paper, we focus on the phenomenon of interactive analogical retrieval (IAR) wherein the source analogues are obtained through interaction with online information environments. We first provide a descriptive account of IAR based on two in situ studies. We then describe an informatio...

The timing of activity by desert dwelling poikilotherms can be critical to survival. In the western harvester ant, colonies that have higher levels of genetic diversity forage for longer time periods in the morning than colonies with less diversity. We determined whether the advantage of early foraging colonies was consistent by examining foraging behavior at other times of day and year. We use...

In this paper, we introduce a web-enabled geovisual analytics approach to leveraging Twitter in support of crisis management. The approach is implemented in a map-based, interactive web application that enables information foraging and sensemaking using “tweet” indexing and display based on place, time, and concept characteristics. In this paper, we outline the motivation for the research, revi...

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The ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations are shaped by the strategies they use to produce and use resources. However, our understanding of the interplay between the genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors driving these strategies is limited. Here, we report on a Caenorhabditis elegans-Escherichia coli (worm-bacteria) experimental system in which the worm-foraging behavior ...