The relationships between foraging tenure and specialization on materials, and foraging tenure and foraging activity were measured for marked, known-age workers ofthe social wasp Polybia occidentalis. The purpose ofthe study was to assess differences in cost to foragers, in terms ofrisk ofmortality, associated with material specializations and activity level, and determine whether ontogenetic c...

Determining the foraging behaviour of free-ranging marine animals is fundamental for assessing their habitat use and how they may respond to changes in the environment. However, despite recent advances in bio-logging technology, collecting information on both at-sea movement patterns and activity budgets still remains difficult in small pelagic seabird species due to the constraints of instrume...

Longstanding theory in behavioral ecology predicts that prey should evolve decreased foraging rates under high predation threat. However, an alternative perspective suggests that growth into a size refuge from gape-limited predation and the future benefits of large size can outweigh the initial survival costs of intense foraging. Here, I evaluate the relative contributions of selection from a g...

Scientists and managers have become increasingly interested in how pelagic marine protected areas (PMPAs), or protected areas away from the coast, can be used to protect pelagic species. Subsurface-predator facilitated foraging (‘facilitated foraging’) between seabirds and subsurface predators, such as tunas, is a key ecological interaction in the tropical oceans where a number of large PMPAs h...

Foraging behavior is critical for the fitness of individuals. However, the genetic basis of variation in foraging behavior and the evolutionary forces underlying such natural variation have rarely been investigated. We developed a systematic approach to assay the variation in survival rate in a foraging environment for adult flies derived from a wild Drosophila melanogaster population. Despite ...

The German cockroach (Blattella germanica) is an excellent model omnivore for studying the effect of foraging effort on nutrient balancing behavior and physiology, and its consequences for performance. We investigated the effect of foraging distance on individual German cockroaches by providing two foods differing in protein-to-carbohydrate ratio at opposite ends of long containers or adjacent ...

The Cinereous Warbling-finch Poospiza cinerea is a globally vulnerable Emberizidae passerine, patchily distributed and rare in the open savannah of central South America. Attributes of rare species include niche specificity such as feeding habits. To verify possible niche specialization in this species we aimed to describe its foraging habits related to substrate use, foraging and substrate hei...

Behavioral economic studies involving limited numbers of choices have provided key insights into neural decision-making mechanisms. By contrast, animals' foraging choices arise in the context of sequences of encounters with prey or food. On each encounter, the animal chooses whether to engage or, if the environment is sufficiently rich, to search elsewhere. The cost of foraging is also critical...

Group foraging contradicts classic ecological theory because intraspecific competition normally increases with aggregation. Hence, there should be evolutionary benefits to group foraging. The study of group foraging in the field remains challenging however, because of the large number of individuals involved and the remoteness of the interactions to the observer. Biologging represents a cost-ef...

Foraging networks are a key element for ant colonies because they facilitate the flow of resources from the environment to the nest and they allow the sharing of information among individuals. Here we report the results of an 8-month survey, extending from November 2009 to June 2010, of the foraging networks of four mature colonies of Atta bisphaerica, a species of grass-cutting ant which is co...