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© 1995 International Society for Behavioral Ecology

research-article

Patch exploitation, group foraging, and unequal competitors

Esa Ranta, Hannu Rita and Nina Peuhkuri

Integrative Ecology Unit, Department of Zoology P.O. Box 17 (P. Rautatiekatu 13) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

ABSTRACT

Charnov's (1976) marginal value theorem, MVT, addresses how long a forager should stay in a patch of prey to maximize its gain. Information-sharing models of group foraging suggest that individuals should join groups to improve their patch-finding rate. This is achievable if group members share information about the location of food patches. The determinants of the MVT are searching time and cumulative gain against time in a patch, those of the group foraging models are searching time, group size, and individual differences in ability to monopolize the prey found. After combining the MVT and information-sharing models we explore the consequences of unequal competitors (good, G, and poor, P) foraging in groups. Under this domain G and P differ in their accumulated harvest against time in a patch. When the gain function of P is obtained by mere scaling of that of G, optimal patch residence times for individuals of the two phenotypes do not differ. However, if the gain functions of G and P cannot be derived from each other by a constant scaling multiplier, the optimal patch times for G and P are not necessarily the same. Under these conditions the model suggests that foraging groups should become assorted by foraging ability.

Key words: assorted foraging groups, group foraging, information sharing, individual differences, marginal value theorem. [Behav Ecol 6:1–5 (1995)].


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