Leaving patches: Effects of travel requirements

Five pigeons were trained in an analogue foraging procedure in which, by completing a travel requirement, they entered a "patch" in which a reinforcer might be available after an unpredictable time. They also had the opportunity, by emitting a defined response, to exit the patch and travel to another patch. Prey availability in a patch was not signaled. Data were collected on the length of time that subjects stayed in patches before exiting (residence times) as a function of various travel requirements: travel for a fixed time in blackout, fixed-interval schedule traveling, fixed-time traveling with an added response required to terminate traveling, and fixed-ratio traveling. For each of these conditions, the required amount of travel (time or responses) was varied over a wide range. As previously reported, residence times increased with increases in fixed-time traveling, as they did with increasing fixed-interval or fixed-ratio traveling. There was no evidence that adding response or work requirements systematically affected residence time except via increased travel time, although 3 of the 5 birds stayed longer in a patch under higher fixed-ratio values. A "threshold-maximization" model described the data well with a single parameter that was consistent across subjects, procedures, and experiments.