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© 1998 International Society for Behavioral Ecology
research-article |
Evolutionarily stable stealing: game theory applied to kleptoparasitism
aCentre for Statistics and Stochastic Modelling, School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK bDivision of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Address Correspondence to G. D. Ruxton. E-mail: g_ruxton{at}bio_gla.ac.uk M. Broom is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Evolution, University of Sussex
ABSTRACT
We present an individual-based model of a group of foraging animals. Individuals can obtain food either by discovering it themselves or by stealing it from others (kleptoparasitism). Given that challenging another individual for a discovered food item costs time (which could otherwise be spent searching for an undiscovered item), attempting to steal from another may not always be efficient We show that there is generally a unique strategy that maximizes uptake rate—always or never challenging others. For any combination of parameter values, we can identify which strategy is appropraite. As a corollary to this, we predict that small changes in ecolgical conditions can, under some circumstances, cause a dramatic change in the aggressive behavior of individuals. Further, we investigate situations where searching for undiscovered food and searching for potential opportunities for stealing are mutually exclusive activities (i.e., success at one can only be improved at the expense of the other). Using game theory, we are able to find the evolutionarily stable strategy for investment in these two activities in terms of the ecological parameters of the model.
Key words: evolutionarily stable strategy, food contests, foraging behavior, functional response, interference, game theory.
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