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Spatial context influences patch residence time in foraging hierarchies.

Kate R Searle1, Thea Vandervelde, N Thompson Hobbs

  • 1Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. kate.searle@csiro.au

Oecologia
|May 18, 2006
PubMed
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Large herbivores like grizzly bears and mule deer adjust foraging behavior based on resource patchiness at multiple scales. Their patch residence time is influenced by plant availability and the spatial arrangement of resource patches.

Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Behavioral Ecology
  • Wildlife Ecology

Background:

  • Understanding organismal responses to spatial resource heterogeneity is crucial in ecology.
  • Foraging herbivores exhibit complex behaviors influenced by plant distribution across landscapes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how multi-scale plant heterogeneity affects foraging herbivore behavior.
  • To determine if coarse-scale spatial context influences fine-scale foraging decisions.

Main Methods:

  • A nested, two-level patch hierarchy was created to simulate resource distribution.
  • Residence time of herbivores in patches was measured in relation to patch mass and inter-patch distance.
  • Competing models were developed and compared using Akaike weights to assess predictive power.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Models incorporating patch mass and inter-patch distance accurately predicted herbivore residence times (bears: R²=0.67-0.76; mule deer: R²=0.33-0.55).
  • Grizzly bear and mule deer residence times were significantly affected by the surrounding spatial context of resource patches.
  • Higher-level hierarchical effects on lower-level residence times received substantially more support than models ignoring this context.

Conclusions:

  • Foraging behavior in large herbivores is modulated by heterogeneity across multiple spatial scales within patch hierarchies.
  • Simple empirical models can effectively predict patch residence times, offering an alternative to complex optimal foraging models.