Question

(A) Describe the costs and benefits of the “stay” foraging strategy. (B) Describe the costs

and benefits of the “move” foraging strategy. (C) Which strategy conformed to the Marginal Value Theorem?

Answer 1

Foraging behavior have two aims. 1st aim is to obtain sufficient energy to support development, growth also reproduction. 2nd is to obtain the right nutrients. this foraging method are variable, but classified as two groups stay and move.forager can either stay and wait to appear or move to search for prey. some animals like cheetah, lion can be adjusted into both groups. if time and energy cost of obtaining food outweighs the benefits (protein and energy intake) to be gained, the animal will seek out food that is easier to obtain. Energy intake must outweigh energy output or the animal will not survive

The Marginal Value Theorem is called optimality model that tells about the procedure that enhances gain per unit time in the system where resources, as well as rate of returns, reduces with time.The MVT to examining optimal foraging was found to provide more insights into foraging strategy than previous approaches. In a patchily distributed, when animals are foraging, then MVT can be used to calculate duration of time spend by an individual in searching for a specific patch before moving for new one. Situations such as distance between the pathes are more and current patches with poor resources maximises the ratio of travel cost to foraging benefit, in the both cases individual can stay longer. Common example of this will be human. Whenindividual first arrives at a mango tree, the number of mango picked per minute is more, it reduces as the lowest-hanging fruits are consumed.