Skip Navigation



Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on May 19, 2008
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arn057
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
19/5/984    most recent
arn057v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Buchkremer, E. M.
Right arrow Articles by Reinhold, K.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Buchkremer, E. M.
Right arrow Articles by Reinhold, K.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Sector fidelity—an advantageous foraging behavior resulting from a heuristic search strategy

Eva Maria Buchkremer and Klaus Reinhold

Department of Evolutionary Biology, University Bielefeld, Morgenbreede 45, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany

Address correspondence to K. Reinhold. E-mail: klaus.reinhold{at}uni-bielefeld.de.


  Abstract

The desert ant Cataglyphis exhibits a strong tendency toward returning to its previous foraging direction when the last foraging run was successful. This behavior is called sector fidelity. A very simple behavioral rule, the {tau}-rule, has previously been identified as the possible underlying mechanism. Up to now, sector fidelity has been considered a means of facilitating navigation by exploiting familiar landmark information. We propose that sector fidelity enhances the foraging success of ants or other animals in an environment with a heterogeneous resource distribution. We tested the {tau}-rule and another promising behavioral rule in a very simple environment and modeled the foraging success of these strategies. For each condition, the parameters of the 2 heuristics were optimized using an evolutionary algorithm. The results of our simulations show that the {tau}-rule performs very well under different resource distributions and availabilities. It can therefore function as a very general adaptive foraging strategy for finding prey in landscapes with heterogeneous resource distributions.

Key words: Cataglyphis, heuristic, optimal foraging, sector fidelity.

Received 15 January 2008; revised 11 April 2008; accepted 22 April 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J. Exp. Biol.Home page
K. Steck, M. Wittlinger, and H. Wolf
Estimation of homing distance in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, remains unaffected by disturbance of walking behaviour
J. Exp. Biol., September 15, 2009; 212(18): 2893 - 2901.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.