ZOOL371 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Optimal Foraging Theory, Sperm Competition, Diminishing Returns
9 Oct 2018
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Most males die before finding their first mate. Therefore almost no chance in finding a second mate anyways. Animals do it to get food and that can be used for survival and reproduction. Total amount of food eaten and gain of energy. Intake rate (how quickly they can get food) Should be eating the most energy rich food. Crabs should prefer medium sized mussels if they want to max energy. Should eat prey 2 if you encountered it first and would have had to leave to search for prey 1. Only searching time for prey 1 matters not prey 2. Get variation of profitability of food and handling times. Should specialize when there"s a positive benefit and should stop when there"s a negative benefit. But they did not fully specialize and still picked smaller worms. Had such a high amount of energy to eat that they didn"t need to be so efficient. Marginal value theorem is how it is measured.
