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Related Concept Videos

Optimal Foraging

Optimal Foraging

How animals obtain and eat their food is called foraging behavior. Foraging can include searching for plants and hunting for prey and depends on the species and environment.

Conservation of Declining Populations

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Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.

Mate Choice

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Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.

Limits to Natural Selection

Limits to Natural Selection

Organisms that are well-adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. However, natural selection does not lead to perfectly adapted organisms. Several factors constrain natural selection.For one, natural selection can only act upon existing genetic variation. Hypothetically, redtusks may enhance elephant survival by deterring ivory-seeking poachers. However, if there are no gene variants—or alleles—for redtusks, natural selection cannot increase the prevalence of...

Types of Selection

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Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...

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Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance, and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of survivorship and reproductive strategies, including semelparity and iteroparity. Semelparous species reproduce only once in their lifetime, often investing most available resources into that single reproductive event. Iteroparous species, by contrast, reproduce multiple times over their lifetimes, typically allocating fewer resources to any single...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Operant Conditioning Task to Measure Song Preference in Zebra Finches

Operant Conditioning Task to Measure Song Preference in Zebra Finches

Published on: December 26, 2019

Optimal foraging: a bird in the hand released.

Joshua Nahum¹, Benjamin Kerr

¹Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. nahumj@u.washington.edu

Current Biology : CB

|May 8, 2008

Summary

Optimal foraging theory explains how animals maximize resource intake. Recent viral evolution experiments provide a novel perspective on this classic ecological concept.

Area of Science:

Evolutionary Biology
Ecology
Virology

Background:

Optimal foraging theory traditionally models animal feeding strategies.
This theory posits that organisms evolve behaviors to maximize net energy gain from foraging.

Discussion:

Recent evolutionary experiments have applied optimal foraging theory to viruses.
These studies explore viral resource acquisition and replication strategies.

Key Insights:

Viral evolution can be understood through the lens of foraging efficiency.
Viruses exhibit adaptive strategies to optimize resource utilization.

Outlook:

Future research can further integrate viral systems into foraging theory.

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Last Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Operant Conditioning Task to Measure Song Preference in Zebra Finches

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Published on: December 26, 2019

Foraging Path-length Protocol for Drosophila melanogaster Larvae

Foraging Path-length Protocol for Drosophila melanogaster Larvae

Published on: April 23, 2016

This interdisciplinary approach may reveal universal principles of resource optimization across biological scales.