BIO 3240: Optimal Foraging Theory Part 2 — Patches, Central Places, and Limits of Optimality

Vocabulary flashcards covering patch use models, the Marginal Value Theorem, Central Place Foraging Theory, non-food foraging tests, and behavioral departures from energetic optimality.

Marginal Value Theorem (MVT)

An optimality model proposed by Charnov (1976) predicting that a forager should leave a depleting patch when its instantaneous rate of intake drops to the average intake rate for the entire habitat, travel time included.

Tangent-Line Construction (MVT)

A graphical method to determine optimal patch residence time ($t^*$) by plotting travel time to the left of zero ($-T$) on the x-axis and drawing a tangent line to the patch's cumulative gain curve, representing the maximum average rate of intake.

Depleting Patch

A spatially clumped resource area where a forager's intake rate slows over time as food becomes progressively depleted, scarce, and wary.

Central Place Foraging Theory (CPFT)

An optimality framework for animals that must transport harvested resources back to a fixed central point (e.g., nest, den, or burrow), predicting that animals should collect larger loads from farther distances to offset rising travel costs.

Information Center Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposing that communal roosts or colonies serve as information exchanges where naive individuals follow informed foragers directly to known patches, reducing search and travel costs.

Waggle Dance

A communication display performed by honeybee scouts on the vertical honeycomb where the angle of the dance relative to vertical encodes the direction of food relative to the sun and the waggle duration encodes the distance to the patch.

Muscardinus avellanarius

The hazel dormouse, an arboreal British rodent studied to test whether central place foraging logic applies to collecting non-food nest-building materials such as honeysuckle bark, oak, and beech.

Effort (Material Foraging Metric)

A metric used in nest-material studies defined as the proportion of a material used in the nest multiplied by the distance from the nest to the nearest plant individual ($\text{proportion used} \times \text{distance}$).

Cropping

A foraging tactic in dugongs where only the leaves of seagrass are stripped above the sediment, yielding fewer calories than excavating but enabling regular visual scans for predators such as tiger sharks.

Excavating

A dugong feeding tactic that digs deep into sediment to harvest nutrient-rich seagrass rhizomes, delivering high energetic intake but producing sediment plumes that hinder predator vigilance.

Satisficing

A decision-making strategy where an animal stops searching once a choice meets a 'good enough' threshold, favored when finding the theoretical optimum costs more energy, time, or risk than it yields.

Profitability

The fitness value of a prey item calculated as its net energetic value divided by its handling time ($E / h$).

Zero-One Rule

A prediction of the optimal diet model stating that lower-ranked prey items should either always be accepted or completely ignored depending strictly on the encounter rate with higher-ranked prey.