Foraging

Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives.

Behavioral ecologists use economic models to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimality model. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision. The payoff for many of these models is the amount of energy an animal receives per unit time, more specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. Foraging theory predicts that the decisions that maximize energy per unit time and thus deliver the highest payoff will be selected for and persist. Key words used to describe foraging behavior include resources, the elements necessary for survival and reproduction which have a limited supply, predator, any organism that consumes others, and prey, an organism that is eaten in part or whole by another.

Behavioral ecologists first tackled this topic in the 1960s and 1970s. Their goal was to quantify and formalize a set of models to test their null hypothesis that animals forage randomly. Important contributions to foraging theory have been made by:

Several factors affect an animal's ability to forage and acquire profitable resources.

Learning is defined as an adaptive change or modification of a behavior based on a previous experience. Since an animal's environment is constantly changing, the ability to adjust foraging behavior is essential for maximization of fitness. Studies in social insects have shown that there is a significant correlation between learning and foraging performance.

In nonhuman primates, young individuals learn foraging behavior from their peers and elders by watching other group members forage and by copying their behavior. Observing and learning from other members of the group ensure that the younger members of the group learn what is safe to eat and become proficient foragers.

One measure of learning is 'foraging innovation'—an animal consuming new food, or using a new foraging technique in response to their dynamic living environment. Foraging innovation is considered learning because it involves behavioral plasticity on the animal's part. The animal recognizes the need to come up with a new foraging strategy and introduce something it has never used before to maximize his or her fitness (survival). Forebrain size has been associated with learning behavior. Animals with larger brain sizes are expected to learn better. A higher ability to innovate has been linked to larger forebrain sizes in North American and British Isle birds according to Lefebvre et al. (1997). In this study, bird orders that contained individuals with larger forebrain sizes displayed a higher amount of foraging innovation. Examples of innovations recorded in birds include following tractors and eating frogs or other insects killed by it and using swaying trees to catch their prey.

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