Foraging for resources

1. Foraging for resources

2. Getting food is a critical part of every animal’s existence. No animal can survive to reproductive age without knowing how to forage, so natural selection should favor efficient foraging strategies. All evidence suggests that this is in fact the case. Foraging

3. About 50,000,000 years ago (that’s 50 MILLION) ants began cultivating their own food by entering into a mutually beneficial relationship with certain species of fungi. Ants promote the growth of the fungi by controlling the environment (temperature, moisture content, etc.), which is good for the fungi. The Ants then eat the vegetative mycelium which are produced by the fungi (which is good for the ants). Aside from humans, ants are one of the few groups on the planet that grow their own food. In 1999, Cameron Currie found another piece to the puzzle, some ants associated with fungal care have a white crusty substance growing on them. This substance was found to be a mass of Streptomyces bacteria. This bacteria is known to kill bacteria that harm fungi, and it is hypothesized that the ants use it to protect their crop. Ant foraging story

4. Many birds and mammals cash their food (hide it underground for later use) Squirrels, Foxes, Corvid birds (Crows, Magpies, Jays, and Jackdaws) are but a few common species that exhibit this behavior. Their ability to remember where thousands of bits of food are hidden (spatial memory) is amazing. How do they do it? In 1992, Susan Healey and John Krebs studied spatial memory in 7 species of Corvid bird. 2 of these species did not cash food at all. 4 species did some food cashing and 1 species (the European Jay) fed almost exclusively on cashed food, and had to remember the location of between 6,000 and 11,000 seeds for up to 9 months. What Healey and Krebs found was a strong correlation between the volume of the bird’s hypocampus (a small region of the hind brain) and the ability to remember where food stores were hidden (the larger the hypocampal volume, the more cashes that could be remembered) Cashing food (How do they remember?)

5. So, what questions do we need to ask about foraging: • How does foraging theory predict where and what animals eat? • What role does learning play in foraging decisions? • How does group social dynamics affect foraging? • How does the organism’s anatomy and physiology affect it’s foraging behavior? Questions about Foraging

6. Optimal Foraging Theory models are models that answer the following questions: • What food items should a forager eat? • How long should a forager stay in a certain food patch? • How is foraging affected when certain nutrient requirements are in place? • How does variance in food supply affect a forager’s decision about what food types to eat. Optimal foraging theory (oft)

7. One of the most basic problems of foragers is what items to include in a diet and what to exclude. Let’s suppose an animal can potentially forage for and consume food types A, B, and C. Should the forager eat all three? Only type B? Perhaps two out of the three, but if so, which subset (A&B, B&C, A&C). Scientists have developed mathematical optimality models to predict the ESS. What to eat & where to eat it

8. Let’s consider the simplest possible case; choosing between two food types. It does not matter what the food type is (prey, seed, etc.) each food type will have a caloric value (how much energy the forager will get from eating it), an encounter rate (how often the forager will find it), and a handling time (how long it takes the forager to acquire it) associated with it. As an example: one prey type may be encountered every three minutes (encounter rate). It may take the forager 2 minutes to kill and eat it (handling time), and it may get 300 calories from ingesting it (energy). Basic OFT (What to eat)

9. Let’s define the profitability of the food item as Energy divided by Handling Time (E/HT). The greater the E/HT ratio, the greater the profitability of going after that item. If we assume that the prey item with the highest profitability is always taken (we’ll call it item A), then the question is should item B ever be taken, and if so when? A little bit of higher order math shows the following surprising result: More basic OFT

10. What is surprising is that the math shows, it is not the availability of food item B that matters, it is the availability of food item A that determines whether it’s an ESS to take both items or just item A. If item A is encountered often enough, then it doesn’t matter how many item B’s are available, the forager should only take item A, but if the availability of item A falls below a certain threshold, then the forager should make item A and item B part of its diet. Simplest case results…

11. Another critical decision a forager needs to make is how long to stay in a patch of food. • For example: • How long should a hummingbird stay sucking nectar from one flower, given that there are other flowers available? • How long should a bee spend extracting pollen from one flower before it moves on to the next? Basic OFT (Where to eat)

12. In 1979 Eric Charnov developed the MarginalValueTheorem. Imagine a forager is feeding in an area with different patches of food. As the forager feeds, it is depleting the patch of food it is currently on, causing the rate of consumption to slow down. Other less depleted patches become more attractive. In order to get to a new patch, the forager must pay some cost (lost time foraging, increased predation pressure, etc.) So the question becomes, how long should the forager stay in the patch it’s depleting before moving on? Where to eat cont’d

13. Marginal Value Theorem The Marginal Value Theorem shows us 3 things: 1. A forager should only stay in an area until its ability to successfully forage is the same as the average ability to successfully forage in any local patch Here are 4 patches and their relative forage success rates. So the first patch is best, the last is worst. 8 5 5 2 The average success rate for these 4 patches will be 8+5+5+2 = 20 / 4 or 5. So a forager in the first patch should only stay until the success rate hits 5, etc. 2. The greater the distance between patches the longer the forager should stay in one. 3. Foragers should stay longer in patches that are poor quality when they initially arrive.

14. Generalists will take items in proportion to their availability (They will usually eat the most abundant food source in an area). Specialists will take a small portion of one or a few types of food items. Specialists vs. Generalists ultimate generalist # of resources taken ultimate specialist # of resources available

15. Extreme specialists will eat very few things, or only one thing. Specialists Specialist Generalist Stereotyped Plastic • They are classified by the time and energy they invest in foraging. Time Maximizers: Maximize their energy intake per unit of time (worry about calories per minute). These are typically the high metabolic rate organisms (hummingbirds, shrews, etc.). Energy Maximizers: These organisms acquire as much energy as possible with out a time constraint. These are typically the grazing animals. {For example: Wild Elephants feed for 20 hours a day}

17. Preference of food and “switching” The availability of Mayflies changes seasonally. “Switching” is showing a preference for food items that are in season. Look at this graph (of Trout stomach contents). What does it show? Does this surprise you? Spring/Summer # of Mayflies in the diet Fall/Winter # of Mayflies in the environment There is such a thing as a Balanced Preference. A Balanced Preference is showing a preference (at least in part) for food items that take care of a dietary constraint. For example every human society has a dish that contains some kind of legume (peas, beans, etc.). This is because humans have a dietary need for an amino acid that can only be obtained through legume consumption. So humans show a balanced preference for legumes.

18. Terrestrial plants have more calories then aquatic plants, so Moose should just eat terrestrial plants. All grazing animals have a sodium constraint (need salt), and aquatic plants have more salt than terrestrial plants, so the Moose must eat, at least some, aquatic plants. A Moose is a big animal, so it requires a lot of energy. Also a Moose’s rumen (stomach) is only so big, so it can only hold so much food. So, what’s a Moose to do… The moose salt budget (balanced preference)

19. Moose’s diet plan Energy Constraint This triangle formed between the three lines represents where the Moose must feed (how many aquatic vs. terrestrial plants the Moose must eat). intake of aquatic plants Rumen Constraint. The Moose’s stomach can only hold this much. Sodium constraint. The Moose must get at least this much sodium. intake of terrestrial plants

21. Any foraging animal has a bunch of decisions to make. Decision matrix… Decision Variables resume search Consumption time No Yes successful? Pursuit & Kill time No Yes attack? Recognition time No Yes item encountered Start Here

22. For all animals the profitability of a food is roughly equal to the Energy content of the food / search time + handling time • For Generalists the search time tends to be short (they eat just about anything so there is generally something close by to eat), but the handling time tends to be longer (they are not expert at handling any one type of food). • So, the ultimate goal is to maximize the average rate of energy consumption. • For generalists, many foods do that • For specialists, few foods do that Back to seach & handling times

23. McArthur and Pianca came up with the Patch Model in 1966. Where to forage Time to travel to nearest patch These lines cross closest to 4 Time spent hunting for food once on a patch. Time Since the lines cross close to 4, optimally this species should feed at 4 different patch types (4 different types of food). That’s the ESS for this species. 5 1 4 2 3 6 Number of patch types (different kinds of food)

24. Here are some sub-decisions a forager needs to think about, within the patch model: • What is the quality of the prey/food like? • What is the abundance of the prey/food like? • How long should the forager stay in the area? • How should the forager search for the prey/food (systematically, randomly)? • How does the forager protect the prey/food it has already foraged? • What competition for prey/food is there? • From its own species • From other species • What are the characteristics of the prey/food (when a predator enters a patch the prey density may be high, but may rapidly change to low as the prey items hide…) Sub-decisions with the patch model

25. Rules of thumb (gut rules the animal just knows, evolutionarily): • When the times between capture become too long. • If the forager is full • If the time in the patch has exceeded some set time • If the number of unsuccessful attempts at capture gets too high • If the number of prey items gets too small • If the quality of the prey is not very good (generally represented by the size of the prey) This is all of course on top of things like how far away is the next patch, how long will it take me to get there, will I get eaten on the way there, etc. When is it time to leave a patch?

26. So birds (at least sometimes) visit the poorest patches to check on conditions (they don’t spend all their time at the best patches). Let’s look at a system involving zooplankton (producer), Three-Spine Stickleback (fish/1 consumer), and the Belted Kingfisher (bird/2 consumer). What can behavior tell us about patch choice? o o

27. Patch choice of sticklebacks… No Kingfisher present Kingfisher present Attack strikes by Sticklebacks low medium high Population density of Zooplankton