Related papers: Caching in or falling back at the Sevilleta
Resource are often not uniformly distributed within a population. Spatial variations of concentration of a resource, change the fitness of competing strategies locally. The notion of fitness varying with respect to both genotype and…
In this study, we couple a population dynamics model with a model for optimal foraging to study the interdependence between individual-level cost-benefits and population-scale dynamics. Specifically, we study the logistic growth model,…
To survive in dynamic and uncertain environments, individuals must develop effective decision strategies that balance information gathering and decision commitment. Models of such strategies often prioritize either optimizing tangible…
Organisms that exploit different environments may experience a stochastic delay in adjusting their fitness when they switch habitats. We study two species whose fitness is determined by the species composition of the local environment, as…
We introduce a model of traveling agents ({\it e.g.} frugivorous animals) who feed on randomly located vegetation patches and disperse their seeds, thus modifying the spatial distribution of resources in the long term. It is assumed that…
We consider a spatial (line) model for invasion of a population by a single mutant with a stochastically selectively neutral fitness landscape, independent from the fitness landscape for non-mutants. This model is similar to those…
We present a novel model of stochastic differential equations for foraging behavior of fish schools in space including obstacles. We then study the model numerically. Three configurations of space with different locations of food resource…
Consumer foraging behaviors are dynamic, changing in response to prey availability, seasonality, competition, and even the consumer's physiological state. The isotopic composition of a consumer is a product of these factors as well as the…
We study an individual-based model in which two spatially-distributed species, characterized by different diffusivities, compete for resources. We consider three different ecological settings. In the first, diffusing faster has a cost in…
Species sharing a habitat will co-evolve to make use of the available resources, as consumption is modulated by competition and negative feedback loops between consumers and resources. The dietary range of a given species determines the…
The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…
Unraveling patterns of animals' movements is important for understanding the fundamental basics of biogeography, tracking range shifts resulting from climate change, predicting and preventing biological invansions. Many researchers have…
Collective foragers, from animals to robotic swarms, must balance exploration and exploitation to locate sparse resources efficiently. While social learning is known to facilitate this balance, how the range of information sharing shapes…
We study the dynamics of a \emph{myopic} forager that randomly wanders on a lattice in which each site contains one unit of food. Upon encountering a food-containing site, the forager eats all the food at this site with probability $p<1$;…
The persistence of populations depends on the minimum habitat area required for survival, known as the critical patch size. While most studies assume purely diffusive movement, additional movement components can significantly alter habitat…
One essential ingredient of evolutionary theory is the concept of fitness as a measure for a species' success in its living conditions. Here, we quantify the effect of environmental fluctuations onto fitness by analytical calculations on a…
The storage effect is a general explanation for ecological coexistence, wherein different species specialize on different states of a fluctuating environment, e.g., hot vs. cold years. Despite the storage effect's prominence in theoretical…
Artificially evolving foraging behavior in simulated legged animals has proved to be a notoriously difficult task. Here, we co-evolve the morphology and controller for virtual organisms in a three-dimensional physically realistic…
Many search processes are conducted in the vicinity of a favored location, i.e., a home, which is visited repeatedly. Foraging animals return to their dens and nests to rest, scouts return to their bases to resupply, and drones return to…
The storage effect is a well-known explanation for coexistence in temporally varying environments. Like many complex ecological theories, the storage effect is often used as an explanation for observed coexistence on the basis of heuristic…