Foraging decisions in risk-uniform landscapes

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Ecology
• Evolutionary Biology
• Decision Science

Background:

• Evolutionary principles dictate maximizing fitness by balancing gains and risks.
• Existing decision-making models often focus on choices with differing risks, neglecting uniform risk scenarios.
• Optimal foraging research predominantly examines choices under varying predation risks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the lack of predictions for investment patterns in uniform risk distributions.
• To test extrapolated predictions from local risk-heterogeneity models to landscape-level uniform risk.
• To investigate how animals adjust foraging effort in landscapes with uniform but varying risk levels.

Main Methods:

• Utilized foraging behavior in small mammals as a model for decision-making.
• Created artificial, risk-uniform landscapes with varying overall risk levels.
• Compared foraging effort distribution and total returns between low and high uniform risk landscapes.

Main Results:

• In low uniform risk landscapes, foraging effort was equally distributed among options.
• In high uniform risk landscapes, animals concentrated foraging on fewer options.
• Animals accepted lower total foraging returns in high uniform risk environments compared to low risk ones.

Conclusions:

• Animal foraging strategies shift significantly with uniform risk levels.
• High landscape-wide risk leads to concentrated foraging and reduced opportunity costs.
• The observed gain-risk trade-off in foraging may extend to economic decision-making contexts.