Stephens & Foraging - Behavior and Ecology - Chapter 2 pdf

Part I Foraging and Information Processing [...]... “long-short-longshort-long-short ” will give the same long-term encounter rate as “longlong-long-short-short-short ” Yet these researchers found that observed patch-leaving behavior reflects the most recently experienced travel time, rather than the environmental average (Cuthill et al 1990), making this one of several lines of evidence against the long-term maximization assumptions of traditional foraging. .. influences behavior, we would expect an interaction between the information treatments and the group size treatments Recent work by Dornhaus and Chittka (20 04) on the honeybee dance language provides a masterful example of how we might study the information value of social interactions 2. 7 The Behavioral Ecology of Information and Cognition Information problems connect behavioral ecology with basic behavioral... after long-to-short (or short-to-long) transitions (the argument being that if only the most recent travel experience was important, then the first short travel time should be sufficient to change observed behavior) Unfortunately, no study has compared different levels of environmental change within a single experiment Parallel Tracking and the Behavioral Ecology of Memory These empirical and theoretical... that constrains foraging behavior This approach assumes that some mechanism constrains animals to have less accurate representations of long time intervals and works out the consequences for foraging behavior The second, and more challenging, type of connection occurs when 55 56 David W Stephens behavioral ecologists use economic principles to provide novel insights into questions about behavioral mechanisms... occurring behavior that interests behavioral ecologists One can easily fall into the trap of considering learning as something that happens in laboratories with rats and pigeons, yet learning is a ubiquitous behavioral mechanism that animals use in many contexts Recent work by Dukas addresses this problem by exploring the role of learning about mates and courtship behavior in Drosophila (Dukas 20 04b, 20 05a,... Cuthill and his colleagues (Cuthill et al 1990, 1994; Kacelnik and Todd 19 92) manipulated the temporal pattern of travel times and observed the effect on patch exploitation behavior This experimental paradigm challenges conventional theory because conventional models predict that the long-term rate of patch encounter will control patch exploitation patterns, and that travel time patterns such as “long-short-longshort-long-short... resource in the environment) This gives a rate of q · 0 + (1 − q)sp τ+s (2. 3) The value of information is therefore (1 − q)sp (1 − q)sp − , τ + s (1 − q) τ+s (2. 4) 41 42 David W Stephens Figure 2. 4 The relationship between p (probability of food in partially full patches) and optimal giving-up time (GUT) As p increases, the optimal giving-up time decreases This is a discrimination effect; when p is near... emphasized and the current sample should be devalued Finally, foragers can obtain information from conspecifics and group members These public information problems should be analyzed using game theory 2. 9 Suggested Readings The approach of Dall et al.’s (20 05) recent review parallels the approach taken in this chapter, but it offers a broader perspective A recent study by McLinn and Stephens (20 06) explores... in which animals combine recent and long-term experience, yet behavioral ecologists could do much more Specifically, no single study has manipulated environmental change and sampling error in a factorial way In addition, we need more basic theoretical work We need models of short-term maximization to account for effects like those observed by Cuthill and colleagues, and we need to link these studies... of information In addition, behavioral ecologists have long thought that groups can improve feeding rates, and information transfer among group members can account for at least part of this facilitation effect (see, for example, Krebs et al 19 72; Lack 1968; Ward and Zahavi 1973) Recent work (Clark and Mangel 1984, 1986; Templeton and Giraldeau 1995; Valone 1989; Valone and Giraldeau 1993) has sharpened . characteristic curve, as figure 2. 2 shows. A comparison of figures 2. 2A and 2. 2B shows how receiver operating characteristic curves differ between easy and difficult discrimination prob- lems. Part A shows. Part I Foraging and Information Processing